Just for Kicks (A White Collar Big Bang fic)

[afiawri]

Title: Just for Kicks
Author: Afiawri
Artist: Tinnny
Art: On Tinnny's journal.
Pairing: Neal/Kate, Kate/Fowler
Rating: PG13
Word Count: 10,200
Spoilers: Season 1, Kate arc, finale in particular. COMPLETELY disregards season 2.
Warnings: Angst, manipulation, plotting character death
Summary: Kate had always broken things, usually when she was angry. Things, not people. But she’d, beyond a shadow of a doubt, broken Neal. He'd been perfect and in love with her and she'd loved that, but she hadn't loved him, not nearly enough.
Written for: The White Collar big bang.
Author's Note: I do not own White Collar or its characters.
Thank you: To Tinnny I was a complete nightmare to work with; Tinnny was amazing- made no less than seven pieces of art work, including a cover and plus an icon.
To photoash For helping me get this done and being an all around encouraging friend.








Prologue

Kate had always broken things, usually when she was angry. Things, not people. And Neal was more than a thing to her. He was, he was, he was. But she wasn’t sure she even believed herself.

She’d, beyond a shadow of a doubt, broken Neal. It wasn’t what she set out to do, but she couldn’t call it an accident. She slouched in the passenger seat and wondered what she had become. Her gaze slid to the driver’s seat, but his eyes were glued to the windshield and her tears weren’t unnoticed. He just didn’t know what to do with them.

Kate slumped farther down, no longer interested in the intent expression he wore while staring down an empty stretch of road. Alone with her dark thoughts. But it would be okay. Her love was right here and he was all she could ever want and he understood her even now when she saw she’d never really understood herself. But he’d always been of the opinion there was nothing in her that needed fixing. The smiling man she’d met years ago on Alex’s arm would’ve disagreed if he’d been able to look deep enough, but he’d never sought out flaws.

Everything would be okay. She’d planned Neal’s misfortune- not maliciously, not every single step from the very beginning; in small, seemingly harmless pieces, but she’d planned it- and it would be okay anyway. She just needed a few days to pull herself together.

It was quite sad, really, how lonely and desperate some men got. That’s not to say Kate was willing to sleep with Mr. Greene, not in this lifetime, but that wasn’t what he was looking for. He just wanted a young, beautiful woman on his arm. And, since his bank account was large to the point of being unwieldy, poorly organized, and Greene had all the information on it stored in his home office, Kate was more than happy to provide.

Kate winked at her new friend, Alex, across the buffet table. Alex insisted she had a crush on Greene- “It’s his voice,” she’d said with her eyes boring into Kate’s with no spark of longing in them as she spoke and no wistfulness in her voice- Alex failed to elaborate further and that girl loved the sound of her own voice. Given that and Alex’s boyfriend’s gorgeous voice- not to mention his face- Kate had begun to suspect Alex had her own agenda. It made her nervous and fidgety and threw her off her game.

“Are you all right, my dear?” he asked her for the third time in ten minutes.

“I’m fine. Excuse me just a moment, though?”

“Of course,” he rumbled in his deep, melodic voice. There was a quality to it, but not enough to justify ignoring the jowls. Or the breath.

Kate walked casually, slowly to the house, careful not to let her heels sink into the soft ground.

She passed Alex’s boyfriend, Neal, on the stairs on her way up to the home office. He was a strange man. Charming and handsome, sure, but he spent more time folding squares of paper than a nine-year old girl and was at least as sensitive. She’d never seen a grown man do a kicked puppy impression until she’d met Neal. And that was only half the reason she didn’t trust him.

“You don’t look so good, Kate. What’s wrong?”

“Hm? Oh, nothing.” Nothing except the fact she thought Neal and Alex were after her mark. She should’ve known this was too easy. She stepped around him and walked the rest of the way up the stairs, aware the whole way that he turned to watch her and didn’t continue on his way down.

When she made a beeline for the home office, he said, “The bathroom’s to the left,” and she gave him a withering look over her shoulder. He laughed, nodded subtly at the spots of dirt in the shape of her unusual heels she was leaving behind, and trotted down the carpeted stairs.

She marched into the office and saw exactly where Neal had been- he’d taken exactly what she’d spent weeks planning to steal. She snarled and marched back down, cleaning up dirt as she went.

When she reemerged on the lawn, Neal looked extra smug and there was a sparkle of humor in his eyes. Alex smirked, in on the shared joke. Kate ducked her head and looked away. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed Neal’s expression turn thoughtful and slightly abashed.

Humiliated and empty handed, she slinked back to Greene and hooked her arm back in his. She was stuck carrying out her original plan so she still wouldn’t be blamed for stealing something she didn’t even have. She had to charm Greene. His jowls bounced with laugher at a friend’s joke and Kate choked back the bile in her throat.




The door bell rang and she opened the door onto Neal holding yellow daffodils and wearing a goofy grin.

“Flowers,” she said by way of greeting.

“And an apology,” Neal added brightly.

“An apology for what?” she asked, even as he drew so close she stepped back. He acted like she’d invited him in, even politely scraped his shoes off on the doormat before stepping past her into the sun lit but sparse kitchen.

Neal clasped his hands behind his back to watch her find a vase. “You know what.”

“You drove all the way across town to give me flowers?” she said, maneuvering the vase awkwardly under the kitchen faucet in the shallow sink. No one gave her flowers. Mostly that was because people knew she hated looking at them every day and trying to judge which were dead and when she had to toss the whole bouquet in the trash. It was undeniably a nice gesture, though, so she hid her displeasure.

Neal shrugged, but she could see in his eyes that he thought a great deal of her appreciation.

“Neal.”

He gave her a bright, interested look. Kate got the impression that he was hanging onto her every word and only slightly faking the intensity of his interest. She should’ve hated having to crush him. “Neal, you’ve got a girlfriend. And…”

“You’ve got Keller, I know.”

“I wouldn’t say I have Matthew. Thank you for the flowers, but leave.” As an afterthought, she added, “Please.”

Neal didn’t look crushed. On the contrary, he took a step forward and brushed his finger across her cheek, staring into her eyes.

She stepped back. “You weren’t listening.”

“I always listen. The first thing you said to me was ‘Ah, my foot!’ and the second was, ‘You think rather highly of yourself, don’t you?’” Neal laughed and leaned forward, his wide, gray eyes sparkling with happiness.

“In my defense, you do,” Kate said, unable to keep herself from flirting back. She drew away, flattered that he remembered every word she’d said to him, though admittedly there were few, but determined to send him away so he wouldn’t become a pawn against her in the games she played with Matthew Keller.

She opened her mouth to claim she was Alex’s friend first and not about to get between them. Neal saw enough of this in the shake of her head that he nodded with a saddened smile and turned to leave.

Watching him go, Kate remembered again her mother telling her that if she ever fell in love with a boy, she better make sure he treasured her heart. She’d always listened. It was why she and Matthew weren’t yet an item. She didn’t have to wonder if her mother would’ve approved of a boy who hung on her every word.

The next time Neal showed up at her door, he knew better than to have flowers. Maybe it was what she’d said, but she got the feeling he had watched her face as he handed them to her and decided against giving her flowers again. The disappointment was small against the nearly overwhelming feeling of flattery. He heard more than just her words. She’d never felt so cherished, like the center of undivided attention, and so she’d let him in, let herself savor his presence.

“I head Matthew has a backgammon opponent with dark hair and enough charm for a dozen girls at once.” She said, wanting his reaction more than an answer.

“Keller and I have been playing backgammon for some time now. And I’d say I have just enough charm for one very special girl. If she’ll let herself be charmed.”

“I’d rather be won.”

“Really? Disney taught me that girls don’t like to be won.”

“What it set out to teach you was that every woman is an individual. No one thing works on all of us.”

Neal laughed and agreed, “Truer words have never been spoken.”

Too agreeable. Too likable. Too polished. She wanted to wrench the conman personality from him, see the human side. See him disagree. See him love. See him cry. See him scream. See him unable to keep that mask in place.

“You know all the moves, don’t you?” she demanded, stepping up onto her toes so she was nose to nose with Neal, but not quite eye to eye.

“No moves. People usually appreciate genuineness. It’s usually a matter of talking about the good you see and leaving the bad parts out-” he faltered.

“Oh?”

He bowed his head with a shy smile on his face. “I can’t think straight around you, not well enough to exclude anything.” He flicked his eyes up to her, a question, asking if she’d heard everything he meant.

He’d never said a word bad about her and he didn’t leave anything out. She could put two and two together. She raised an eyebrow. “You think I’m perfect?”

“I think I like everything I know. And I’d like to know more.”

“Nice catch.”

“Not a catch. Just a truth. Give me one chance, Kate? Just one.”

Kate crossed her arms and tilted her head to the side. It sounded like a plea she’d heard before. Except that it was usually followed with a promise to disappear if that one chance didn’t work out. She noticed Neal didn’t offer her any such promise.

“I like winners,” she said. Neal’s eyes lit up. She continued, “And you seem more like a cheater,” meaning in games, in life, and on Alex, all at once.

“I sure do win a lot, though.”

“It’s not winning. You’re not even playing the same game as everyone else.”

“Same game, different rules.”

“Uh-huh.” Wrong answer. “Go back to Alex.”

“Alex and I are through.”

“Why?” Kate took a step back.

“Because there’s this other girl. She’s pretty, she’s smart, and when she blushes she’s the cutest thing. She’s got the softest heart I’ve ever seen- doesn’t like cut flowers that’ll just wilt and die. And she intrigues me. I find myself wondering how such a soft hearted girl ended up on Mr. Greene’s arm.”

“I like older men. They’re mature and don’t play mind games or dump their girlfriends because they like some other girl’s legs.” She didn’t need to tell Neal that the mind games were hers and Matthew’s. Let him think all her scorn was for him alone.

Neal flicked a gaze to her legs, and then looked deliberately at the ceiling with a swallow. He was suddenly adorably shy. “I find it funny that you think that dumping Alex was wrong, but you’ll go behind Keller’s back.”

“Oh, forget it. You know damn well what I was doing there with Greene. Ineptly trying to get my hands on some cash. The problem- the problem is I don’t know what you’re doing here.”

“I think I might love you.”

“I think you might be insane.”

“That’s possible.”

She considered him a moment. “I like winners,” she said again.

His eyes roved around her face, searching and memorizing. He left without another word.

Neal made good at the backgammon tournament and got away clean. Matthew was a sore loser when he came away with next to nothing. He came to her apartment angry and refused to be sent away. She ignored his pointed hints that he wanted sex even as they grew into outright demands.

Almost exactly two minutes after he stormed off, Neal arrived, too precise to be a coincidence. Strangely, it was sweeter than it was creepy. But creepy was definitely a factor in his sudden devotion.

“I’m heading back to New York,” she told him before he could say a word. She was getting tired of fighting him and Matthew off.

He deflated, looking crestfallen. “Oh.” He held out his closed hand for her to take something. The fabric flower he dropped into her hand unfolded there, supposed to look as though it were blooming, but merely struggling open, looking creased and crushed. “I got you something that wouldn’t wither.” She looked to his eyes, but though he’d probably bought the flower to present to her with double meaning and laughter lighting up his face, there was nothing more there now.

She turned it over in her hands. “Come with me,” she said, because he was fun and made her feel special and she wasn’t ready to miss either his humorous or loving expressions. He didn’t mean anything to her, but she’d let him tag along like an eager puppy for a while. And, she’d make sure to see more and more of the real Neal Caffrey- someone who had qualms and boundaries and who actually felt fear and sadness and pain, not just the confident caricature.

A plane ride to New York and an apartment lease didn’t make them lovers. Sleeping in the one bed next to him didn’t change anything. For a while, she didn’t even consider them friends. Not even really roommates. Strangers who lived together.

Kate grew fidgety in the close quarters they shared. She didn’t like people so close. It helped that Neal was so in love with her that he couldn’t see more than the most obvious flaws. Usually, she’d rage and throw things and chew people out, but she didn’t want to tarnish Neal’s image of her. She chose to talk of white sand and clear skies on those days she couldn’t stand feeling boxed in anymore. She smiled when she saw how nervous it made Neal, that she might just pick up and leave, and found it relieved the pressure of feeling contained better than breaking things.

And then he came home with a bottle of wine more expensive than all of the furniture they owned. She stared when he told her the wine inside was from the store on the corner- “But I got the bottle special. And it’s what counts.”

And that was the day they became lovers. Not the day Kate fell in love, not the day Neal’s love convinced her he was worth keeping around for more than just the good times. That was the day Neal dreamed up far places for her and convinced her that they were not only in reach, but that she didn’t need them when she had him to tell her stories.

Sitting on the rug spread out on that cold, hard floor in the middle of winter, head resting on Neal’s shoulder, she heard him whisper, “I love you.” It was so quiet she wasn’t supposed to hear it. But then he told her everything that he loved about her.

It was a few weeks before he grandly announced to her that he loved her, but she treasured the whispered version over the gesture.

She murmured it back right away. Neal’s entire face lit up. Relief, adoration, joy and a small amount of disbelief radiated from that smile. He told her often, from that day on, that he loved her and why. She told him just as often that she loved him- too. She loved him too, never that she loved him. And she never said why she loved him (too) because she couldn’t figure out why she would. A part of her hoped one day she would fall for him and know. Around Neal, she felt confident and sure. She felt beautiful and respected and loved. But she was happier playing with him than relaxing with him. Happier when he came home frustrated than when he sang old songs of love to her.

Every morning: “Good morning, beautiful,” like beautiful was her name, a title barely worth noting because it was so very obviously hers. At random moments while Kate was blinking in too-bright light or had tripped and broken a pair of heels, Neal would stare for long moments before saying, “You’re beautiful,” like he couldn’t believe she was real. And Kate would laugh, because those were the moments when no one should think she was beautiful, but Neal seemed to.

At first, the “I love you”s were special, he sought out unique and unguarded moments, but those seeped into the comfortable moments too, wormed their way into uncomfortable ones, until a breath with those words on it was just another breath to Kate.

Those were the two average sounding phrases Neal had: You’re beautiful and I love you. The rest of what he had to say was more eloquent, more intricate. He never missed when she was upset and needed cheering up, never missed when she was having an ordinary day that could use a few compliments to give it a little shine.

As time wore on, and Neal built up her confidence until she walked around the world in iron-clad armor made of his pretty, winning words, she needed the confidence less and less.

It took years, but eventually his praise began to sound like an echo, a little hollow only because she already knew that she was smart and pretty and the only one with his heart- he’d told her all this a thousand times before. She still believed him and she still liked hearing it, but it grew a little tiresome and she grew more than a little bored.

When he first started saying I love you, she liked it. When he got confident in saying it, it was still nice to hear. But one day, he turned to her, said, “I love you,” and she thought, How boring. And it had become dull and ordinary. Not just the oft-repeated phrases, but also the longer compliments he took time spinning out.

Several months of this boredom with Neal passed while the idea to play games with him stirred in the back of her mind. She was familiar with games, and a content Neal was no longer exciting or exhilarating, whereas one she played with had promise. He talked often of love. She wouldn’t mind a demonstration.




When she came home mid afternoon the day after deciding toying with Neal would be fun, Neal set aside another finished origami creature. He’d taught her a few of the more basic ones and he liked tucking paper flowers in her hair (never yellow again, though- yellow was Alex’s color.) “Flowers that won’t wilt. Unless you water them,” he’d said, years ago, when he started doing it, pretending as though Alex hadn’t carried a paper flower with her all the time, that this was something as special and unique to them as their wine bottle. Kate had a few in her hair now, blue, a shade that was darker than Neal’s eyes but lighter than her own. In their particularly bright apartment with sunlight streaming in from two sides, they looked washed out.

“Neal,” she said in a moment of inspired curiosity. “I saw a necklace in a store. It’s silver.”

He looked at her, hands clasped over his knee, waiting patiently. “You mean that one that you look at every time we come back from grocery shopping.”

“Yes, that’s the one.”

“Do you want it?”

“Please.”

“I’ll go buy it,” he said, standing.

Just before he laid a kiss on her cheek, she said, “Why not steal it?” She’d seen him steal things, knew he was good but stole sparingly, and she wanted him to steal something just for her. Not something to sell to keep them clothed and housed and fed while he worked a longer con. She wanted something stolen just for her.

He smiled, confused. “Kate, it costs less than two hundred dollars. I can just buy it for you.”

“I don’t want you to.”

He gave her a strange look and the kiss she’d interrupted and then he left, saying, “I’ll go case the place.” Kate perched on the hard wood slat underlying the front edge of the couch cushion to wait. It was a hobby of hers to fiddle with his origami, take the animals apart and fail at putting them back together, but today she watched the door rather than dissect them.

The door opened an hour and a half later. Neal had a sparkle in his eyes and the wrong necklace in his hand. Kate wasn’t cruel enough to insist he’d done it wrong and the pride in his face when he presented her the thousand dollar necklace with large turquoise stones was intriguing and new.

Kate returned his smile minus the nervous, desperate to please eagerness and kissed him and lifted her hair. An undignified squeak escaped her when Neal spun her around in a graceful dancelike step. Her arms flew up so she didn’t elbow him. Laughs, she gathered up the escaped strands of hair. Neal placed it around her neck with gentle hands. When he let go, it weighed on her neck, heavy and not to her taste, but she leaned her head back and caught the pleased look on his face.

She turned around to kiss him and murmur her thanks. He looked like an excited puppy he was so proud. Seeing him like this was far from boring, and she could arouse that look just by fingering the chain on her neck.

The next morning, she woke up with her hair stacked on her head with static and grinned at Neal beside her. Last night Neal had a wild energy about him that had made the sex incomparably hot. She stroked his cheek until he woke.

“Hey,” he said as he stretched.

“Morning.”

“Get me that pair of shoes? The ones you said we couldn’t afford?”

“Of course,” he said with an extra light in his eyes, and she saw that he wasn’t just agreeing because he loved her this time. He agreed because stealing something for her was different rush than stealing out of necessity or wanting to move up in the world, and he wanted to feel that again.

As he jogged out of the apartment with a new spring in his step, Kate flopped back down on their folded out couch that was their bed. She needed some other measure of his love to reassure her in the future, because he actually liked this.

The shoes fit perfectly, but she wore them infrequently because she hated the way Neal beamed at her feet whenever she wore them.

The shoes were the last thing she asked Neal to steal for her.

He went back to getting his kicks from his high-stake thefts even though he asked her from time to time if she’d like an expensive trinket they couldn’t afford or a souvenir from their latest home country. She didn’t want baubles so much as she wanted to see the ways his love for her moved him.

It took her a while to come up with a new way to make him show her that face again, that face that said he’d done something daring and dangerous and magnificent for her, only for her. That he enjoyed it only because it was a way of showing his love for her, and didn’t enjoy the act itself.

Neal had no end to his pretty words for Kate. But being in love didn’t stop him from tailoring some for strangers, other pretty girls. She told herself she wasn’t jealous, and even though she knew it for a lie, it was true that the main reason she said, “I wish you’d stop flirting with other women so much,” was she thought he needed to flirt and wondered if he needed her more.

Neal dropped the hand he was waving after Eliza and looked at her, silently assessing what she meant. Looking at his face, it was clear he’d decided she was insecure. “I’m sorry. I’ll stop.”

And he did. Except when he needed to flirt for a con.

Kate still wasn’t cruel, so she didn’t ask him to stop the cons. He loved the cons and they were the only way he was ever going to be able to keep the litany of promises he’d recited to her over the years. She knew not being able to keep his word to her, make her life into everything he’d imagined for her, would devastate him. She didn’t strip that dream from him.

Neal grew quiet, deprived of his words and his smiles around other women. Almost stone like. And the flirting during the cons she was there for took on a nervous edge that repelled women. He might’ve ended up losing the cons indirectly.

“You know what? Flirt with whoever you want, I don’t care.”

Neal stared at her, his suit jacket still over his arm, his hand still on the door on the way in, coming home from a job.

“But I don’t want to lose you.”

She smiled at Neal like he was being silly to think her bitter. “It’s not an either-or. You’re not you without it.”

The day after, Neal complimented a stranger’s skirt and let her spend ten minutes telling her about the day she bought it before Kate dragged him away, shaking her head with a smile and a roll of her eyes. Neal grinned back at her.

She couldn’t make him keep his smile and his pretty words to himself, but his heart was entirely hers. Who, though, owned his boundaries? His principles? Him or her?

She didn’t come up with a way to tell until their con in Baton Rouge.




“Neal. I think someone’s following me.”

“Following you?”

“I think there’s someone stalking me. I’m scared. Can you… buy a gun or something?” she asked, even knowing how he abhorred violence.

He made a calming motion with his hand and wrapped her in a hug. He stroked her hair, shushed her, and rocked her. “I’ll look into it, okay?”

For several days, she heard nothing more on the subject and was all but ready to break down in tears about her imaginary stalker the day Neal came home with the gun.

“It’s not going to do us any good if you don’t know how to shoot,” she’d whispered, false reluctance in her voice.

“I know how to shoot,” he’d stated plainly, his eyes not meeting hers and a little downcast in shame as he locked the gun away. She didn’t bother pointing out that a gun no one could get to was one that no one could shoot and certainly not one that could be used for protection.

Instead, with a nod, she dropped the whole gun subject. She might as well as have had him steal it, she thought contemptuously, because the whole thing had been rather anticlimactic.

She forgot about the gun. But Neal didn’t.

Two months later, a mark followed Neal home to their the dinky, destitute rented apartment, something “Richard Cathay” never would’ve lowered himself to enter, but Neal Caffrey was content to stay in with his girl friend.

Kate opened the door. “Can I help you?” She blinked and realized who he was. A moment later, he seemed to figure out who she was too- what she was to Neal, that she owned the heart to the man who’d been seducing him for months.

He charged in the door and she could do nothing but stumble back, tried to push past him to the door, but he was a large man. Kate fell on her ass. Terry knocked her to the floor by her throat and didn’t let go.

Kate squirmed, her hands shooting up to claw him with her smooth, manicured nails, staring into his red, rage-twisted face. Every time she scratched him, he tightened his hands. With too little air, her shriek wasn’t loud enough to alert anyone. She couldn’t turn enough to bite him. She tried to shriek again, but it was more of a choke. And then he cut off her air completely.

Something barreled at Terry out of nowhere- Neal, impossibly there, trying to tug Terry off to the side, only succeeding in wrenching his hands around Kate’s neck, threatening to snap it. Her vision blurred, all she could see was that face and Neal’s hand on his shoulder. And then Neal’s hand disappeared. Dizzy, she couldn’t pinpoint his footsteps. But they could only be heading for the door, going for help that would be too late.

Kate opened and closed her mouth wordlessly, tears leaking out of her eyes as they slid shut. She fell limp against the floor, her hands sliding from Terry’s. No, come on. Fight. She tried to raise her hands. But it was useless. She was going to die.

A gunshot rang out and Terry’s hands released her, his body collapsed on her. She coughed and sputtered, trying to open her eyes and see what was going on, but she already knew: Neal had shot Terry.

Neal managed to shove him off her this time, then collapsed next to her and shook more than she did as she coughed and struggled to breathe.

Kate had never asked herself if Neal would shoot a man for her. She’d never have to. She’d been in danger and he pulled it out and shot, simple as that.

He held her and petted her. A steady stream of Sorrys fell from his lips. He cried for hours; she cried only when she couldn’t breathe.

By some miracle, the police didn’t arrive in the hours it took them to recover or in the minutes afterward that they took to throw their stuff together. They’d been staying under assumed names, so they just up and left for New York.

Several hundred miles away from a dead danger, the first thing Kate did when they stepped through the door was say, “We need another gun,” because Neal had thrown the last one into a river before they’d flown back.

He shook his head and shut the door. With strain on his face, he said, “No, Kate.” This one thing, this one thing that she needed, demanded and did not ask for because this was not a game, he refused her.

“Neal!”

“No,” he whispered, his eyes pleading with her to let it go.

“I don’t feel safe without one. I would’ve died if you hadn’t gotten the last one.” Despite Neal’s wince and his attempt to apologize again, she plowed on, “If you love me, you’ll go get a gun.”

He looked away, shame and hurt in his voice as he said, “Please understand. If I was at all capable of owning a gun again, of having one where I might use it again, we’d have one in an instant. I’d fill the apartment with guns until it was overflowing and then buy another and fill that one, but please- please. Nothing will ever happen to you again, I’ll make sure of it. I can’t buy you a gun. I just- I can’t.” He shook and wrapped his arms around himself and, from his posture, he expected her to insist until she grew angry and it turned into an argument. Until they were saying things to each other that they didn’t mean and that always hurt Neal more than they hurt her because she knew how he really felt after hearing it every day, but the only words about her feelings that she’d ever given him besides angry ones were simple I love you toos that someone not in love could say just as easily as someone in love.

But Neal needed her more than she needed that gun, as much as she desperately wanted it. She wrapped her arms around him as he shook and whispered haltingly every few minutes, “Please don’t make me, please forgive me, please, I’m sorry, so sorry. Kate. I love you. I’m sorry… sorry. Sorry.”

She tried not to think how beautiful he was now. He cried and his tears- they were beautiful, too. Almost as beautiful as the relief in his face when she whispered, “I forgive you.”

“Thank you. Thank you,” he sobbed into her shoulder, still careful of her neck. She ran her fingers through his hair and held him as tight as she comfortably could.

After she overcame the trauma of nearly being strangled, she labeled the exercise a success. She’d loved his tears, adored his fear of losing her, and the strain on his face when he’d had to refuse her had been the most beautiful of all.

Kate fingered her neck in the mirror. Finger shaped bruises adorned her neck. They hurt too much to wear a turtleneck over and she got stares as she walked down the street. It was in her nature to hide damage from the world.

Neal knew about these wounds, but there were some she didn’t tell him about. Some she usually didn’t face. But looking at her small fingers next to the black and blue lines, she had to admit to herself that she was messed up. She liked playing games too much. She liked seeing Neal hurt when it should hurt her instead of make her think of him as beautiful piece of artwork that looked even better ruined.

But, as she stared, past the mirror and into her self, she found there was more wrong with her than she’d ever admitted. She didn’t love people, never had. She didn’t love Neal even though any whole woman would consider herself lucky to have that dependable and solid yet wild and vibrant man.

He’d told her stories, before, of things his father had been and things Neal had been and things he’d never wanted to be again and things he was afraid of becoming. He’d told her of his dreams, then, through the tears brought on by the memories, and all she’d wanted was to see what would happen if she crushed them. She wasn’t a whole person.

She wondered if she was trying to break Neal so that she didn’t have to work and struggle and fail to be his equal. She wondered how much Neal suspected and how much his love allowed him to overlook. She should stop. She was realistic enough to know she might never be able to stop fantasizing about hurting Neal, but she knew it would be best if she could stop actually hurting him, testing him, pushing him.

Neal loved her.

Neal deserved to feel loved back. Even if she couldn’t love him, she could pretend.

And for a time, while the gratefulness to be alive and the gratefulness that she’d never have to doubt Neal’s love for her were fresh, she managed to stop toying with him. Managed to be that happy, laughing couple. Managed to fool Neal and sometimes herself.

But, as always, Kate grew bored. If Neal had just broken a little after the incident with the gun, if he had just continued to need her thereafter, she might’ve settled down long enough to figure out a thing or two about love and Neal’s heart might’ve been safe with her. But he worked his way back to the old Neal and all he needed from her was her presence. And she loved his tears too much.

So Kate took to flirting with everything that moved and choosing a few interested seeming people to stand too close to and talk to a little more than usual and even kiss on the cheek if the fancy struck.

It wasn’t until Aaron that Kate found someone with a possessive streak that manifested itself as an arm on her shoulders and a dislike of Neal.

Neal’s usual daily dose of praise gradually grew sadder in tone, until one day he asked, “I love you. More than anything. Do you love me?” And it looked like it would break him to know the truth. He waited for her answer.

“I’m not cheating on you, Neal.”

“That wasn’t what I asked,” he said in a tone that said he knew she was (she actually wasn’t) and that wasn’t what mattered. If she loved him, they’d work through this. It wouldn’t matter, if she loved him, what she’d done. He’d take her back, if she loved him.

“It’s harmless flirting, Neal,” she said, getting angry. “You flirt all the time. I haven’t fallen for some other guy because he’s a little cuddly and can crack a joke every once in a while. Aaron and I are friends.”

Neal gave her a long look. Finally, he nodded. “Okay.” He managed a wobbly smile and retreated to the couch. He curled up there under a blanket and tried to act normal as he flipped through TV channels.

She found out later, from an ever-helpful Alex who was back in town that week and looking to destroy Kate and Neal’s relationship, that he had her followed. And that was why a few days later he was back to his cheerful self, just as a moping Neal was getting old.

But there was a new certainty in his eyes. Something that colored his every action around her. Something that made him hesitate before kissing her, something that alternatively poured praise from his mouth and shut it down to a trickle. Something that kept him from every again asking Do you love me? Perhaps because he knew now to fear the answer. Knew that I love you too wasn’t the same as I love you.

Kate was well over her qualms about hurting Neal after that. He was too pretty when he was sad. There were hundreds of ways to hurt him. Anything that hurt her was a possibility, so long as she didn’t end up too hurt to enjoy the results. If she wanted to, she could get him into a fight with Aaron, a much larger man and a skilled fighter. She could ask for an open relationship- he never denied her anything- and actually sleep around.

She couldn’t choose what she wanted to do next. She resolved to pick something next week, because he sure was boring now and it had been a while since she’d seen how his love for her pushed him.

As it was, he unwittingly saved himself when he got arrested.

She took this as her cue to move on. But she couldn’t resist seeing his face when she left him. And she couldn’t resist visiting him long enough for him to be certain he’d have her all four years and she’d be waiting for him when he got out. Then, when he was certain that her love was at least strong enough to see them through his imprisonment, she intended to leave. Just to see his face when she did, get one last kick out of him.

She knew, on some level, that if she was going to cut him loose, she ought to do it before she tormented him, that she owed him that much. But she couldn’t resist.

The first time she visited him before the trial, they were both all smiles and I missed yous and he even said, “I’ll be out of here in no time.”

“You don’t know that.”

He reached across the table and grabbed her hand. “Kate.” He looked her directly in the eyes and swore, “I’ll get out of here. They won’t be able to convict me on anything.” And then he licked his lips as he sometimes did when he was bracing himself to say something. “Please don’t… please believe that,” he backed out from whatever he’d been about to say. Please don’t leave me, maybe?

She took her hand from him. “I don’t, Neal.” She would’ve been willing to believe him if he hadn’t treated her like a mark, if he hadn’t been more smooth and polished than normal, if he hadn’t been lying. “But whatever it is you’re afraid of, I won’t.”

“I know.” And he seemed to believe her.

She wished she knew what she was promising him, but when she was getting ready to hurt him she’d never said anything but what he needed to hear, and he needed this promise.

She was right not to believe in his ability to wiggle his way out of a conviction.

The first time she visited him in prison, he looked pained. Not injured, but anticipating getting hurt.

“I love you,” she greeted him, more affection in her voice than ever before.

He looked up from his hands, hope in his eyes. “I love you, too. My beautiful angel.”

And she stayed and talked with him for their full time. He slipped in endearments and praises and when she left, he looked grateful to her. He’d expected her to crush him, to leave him. She should’ve then. She would next time, because she was satisfied that he knew her to be loyal. Neal was gullible and too ready to believe when it came to her. His heart was a silly, steady, naïve thing with no connection to his brain.




The second time, she couldn’t tear herself away. The third time she walked in looking forward to the visit, strangely enough. The fourth, she was determined again.

“I worry about you,” he said when she sat down, “taking care of yourself. I... understand if you find someone else.” He took a breath and looked away, moments from crying. He knew he was losing her, he was just wrong about why, and this was his way of asking that she at least come back to him, of letting her know that no matter what she did, no matter how she might betray him, she should never feel like she couldn’t come back to his arms.

“Neal, there’s no one else.”

She watched the confusion grow in his eyes as he searched her face and found her honest. He broke out into a tearful, relieved smile. “I’m sorry I doubted you. I don’t deserve you,” he whispered reverently.

She left the prison glowing. She’d not yet said good-bye, but it was worth it to see him hurt when he lost faith and regained it again, even though she didn’t deserve it. Not that she was cheating. But she was about to break his heart.

The fifth visit, she knew it was time. He was certain of her; it wasn’t like waiting around in the filthy apartment any longer was going to do anything at all.

But he greeted her, “Beautiful,” and it had been long weeks since anyone had called her that. She rarely felt beautiful anymore, only felt that Neal thought she was beautiful. She needed him around to tell her or the certainty faded.

That day, he wove her pretty words. She bumped into a rude stranger on the street on the way back to her empty, lonely apartment. Before, she would’ve responded to, “Watch it, bitch” with a comment of her own, but she just ducked her head and kept walking. The truth was the confidence Neal had nurtured in her had grown holes without him there.

Kate went on visiting him to get the holes in her confident armor refilled with his pretty words. Sometimes, he needed to be comforted for nearly their whole visit before she could coax her weekly fill of praise from his charming lips. The two of them were both messed up just enough that Kate hung on, stayed in that crappy apartment that she’d intended to ditch, and visited him week after week.

In a corner café, she squirmed into a corner where a man sat alone, and asked, “Can I sit here? All the other tables are full.”

Over his newspaper, he nodded. They ate in silence until he blindly reached for his coffee and tipped it over onto her lap.

Kate leapt up and snatched a handful of napkins. When he jumped to help, she caught a flash of a badge.

“FBI, huh?” she asked as sponged up the black coffee from her clothes before she sat down in her coffee-stained skirt on the barely dry chair.

“Heh. You noticed. Yeah, Garrett Fowler, nice to meet you.”

“Kate. The pleasure’s all mine.”

It was the start of friendship and then love. It turned out that Kate did have to use Neal’s permission to cheat. But, as she slowly fell in love with Garrett, the second half of that deal- to make sure she came back to him- fell away.

She and Garrett fit so well together in an easy, comfortable way that Neal had tried to make Kate belong with him by building her up. Being with Garrett didn’t take that much effort. And Kate fell in love for the first time in her life. It was a warped, wrong kind of love but it was pure and uncomplicated and, despite Garrett having none of Neal’s wild streak, never boring.

She still visited Neal, hoarding his admiration and his dependence on her, but she no longer deluded herself that she got anything else out of it, except perhaps amusement.

Over a year later, Garrett felt comfortable enough to sit her down and tell her the moment it happened, “I’m being blackmailed. I don’t know who by, but they want a music box. From the amber room. And I have no idea what to do. I think they contacted me because… I’m close to you and I’m OPR. All I know is I want you far away until this is figured out. Okay, Kate?”

“You need to steal it?”

“Yeah, and I don’t even know where to start looking.” Except to ask Kate.

Kate didn’t hesitate with the answer. The love of her life needed it and she had it to give. In the back of her mind, it processed that this was how Neal had always felt about her. Still, there was no flicker of guilt as she said, “It wouldn’t be hard to lure Neal from prison. And he’d give me anything in a heart beat. Wouldn’t even blink if I asked for the music box.”

“Can’t you just ask?”

“Not with him in prison. And not, I think, without an explanation.”

Garrett considered her a moment, but the fear was already weighing less on his stiff shoulders.

“Only if you’re sure.”

“I’m sure he can do it,” she said, even though Garrett had meant he’d only go through with it if she was sure she could do that to Neal. She wasn’t yet at the point where she was comfortable revealing to Garrett how cruel she was to Neal; she’d rather he think her love for Garret was strong enough to move her to do something like this despite her qualms.

She sat down to talk to Neal like it was any other day.

They usually started off fooling each other with greetings like they were meeting in a café or a museum or anywhere, really, where they could talk face to face and kiss and be in love.

She let on that something’s wrong, let herself seem a little off, but otherwise just talked to Neal.

Neal sensed something was going on, though. He was beautiful and charming and desperate and he pulled out all the stops. He grew more earnest by the minute, promising her this, promising her that, explaining that once he’s out of prison he’ll give her everything-

“But you’re not out of prison, Neal. You’ve been not out of prison for a long while now and will be for a slightly shorter long while.” Kate stood up and said her good-bye. Not even a poetic good-bye: “Adios, Neal. It’s been real.”

“Please stay. Please! I need you. Kate,” he begged. And shouted after her for an explanation. She shivered. He was beautiful and the thrill of pushing him was never as amazing as it was just now. She had to suppress a smirk as she strode out.

She went home and told Garrett he’d be out in a month.

He was out in two.

His love for her was enough to get him out of prison. But without hope, he shut down. He found her gone and just sat down and cried in the middle of the apartment, right where Peter Burke found him. He’d always loved her deeply, but he’d always been able to function through it. If he’d been in top form, he would’ve grabbed up that bottle and kept running and figured out her clues somewhere off the radar. But he didn’t even realize it meant anything, had missed her clues altogether.

He was back in prison. For four months, it looked hopeless. Four long months worrying about Garrett, doing her damnedest to figure out where exactly Neal’s stash was in San Diego. San Diego was a big place, and it was lonely with Garrett back in D.C.

One day, close to Neal’s stash, she was sure, she felt a hand land on her shoulder. She spun around to see Garrett.

“What a nice surprise.” She rose on her tiptoes to kiss him on the nose, but he looked so serious she stopped. He nodded subtly at the camera.

“Caffrey is out of prison. Cut a deal with that agent, Burke. The old plan is going to work, you just have to look like you’re in trouble. He’ll find that picture, won’t he?”

“Yes.” Kate stepped away from the camera to give Garrett that kiss. “Yes, but it won’t matter. I’m inches from his cache. Come with me?”

Neal’s stash wasn’t there. He’d lied to her. Lied. To her! Kate felt betrayed and torn and deceived and Neal had loved her but had known better than to trust her and it didn’t hurt, it sent her into a rage. Neal had just enough sense that she’d have to toy with him a little longer to get what she wanted. And, oh, was she going to toy with him hard now after this little deception. Tear him to pieces.

Garrett gathered her into his arms in front of the empty storage container. “Shhh. It’s okay, you’ll get him.”

“I hate him!”

“We’ll get what we need and then you’ll get your revenge.”

Kate smiled into Garrett’s shoulder. He spoke her language, more than she’d thought anyone could.

She’d underestimated his resourcefulness in finding her. Good old Neal. But she never knew he was so good at moping.

She waited at Grand Central Station the week after he got out. And the week after that. But Neal didn’t show.

Kate paced the hotel room, Garrett watching.

“He fucked up!” she raged.

Garrett held his head in his hands, hope lost too. Were all the men in her life incompetent, ready to give up at the first real obstacle?

She knocked over a lamp. That noise of it shattering calmed her, though not as much as shattering Neal would have. “He’ll figure it out. He always does,” she told the pieces.

“I’m not so certain.”

“You don’t know Neal. Nothing is impossible.” He didn’t know that Neal was capable of everything, killing a man even, when it came to her. He’d get it, he just needed to snap out of this funk he was in. Mozzie would take care of that. He’d figure it out.

That Friday, Neal made it to Grand Central Station.

Kate showed up late that week as she had on all the previous weeks, to give the impression of duress, of needing to slip away and noon not always being convenient or safe.

She decided to beg for his stash instead of just the music box, so it couldn’t come back to Garret and so she’d have a few pieces for herself to keep her new life financially stable. And maybe a little out of spite, asking for something she’d always thought he’d give her, but he’d hidden instead. Maybe a lot out of spite.

This was a new high: giving Neal back hope, but making him think she was in danger and he couldn’t protect her, all at once. He was desperate, she could hear it in his voice, see it in his face- that’s why she stood so close. Just far enough he couldn’t get to her, but close enough to see him look around, realize she was nearby, realize he could find her, touch her, hold her, protect her, if only he could run fast enough.

He couldn’t.

Too bad, better luck next time.

She watched him turn in circles calling for her for minutes after she’d disappeared into the second floor of a nearby dark-glassed building. He called after her, searched for her, and didn’t stop until Mozzie gave up on sadly shaking his head and put a hand on Neal’s shoulder, telling him to give up.

He slouched, facing away, but she could see in the line of his back that he was having trouble holding it together. Scared for her and denied the chance to make things right, he let Mozzie lead him away. She wondered if he’d cry tonight.

While Kate was having fun, Garrett was growing frustrated. Finding Neal’s stash had fallen through. They could only hope for the music box. So Garrett commissioned the theft of a pink diamond, starting to gather up enough money to pay off his blackmailer. She could’ve told him Burke was a persistent man and Neal a smart one. She definitely would’ve told him not to pin it on Neal.

“You did WHAT!”

“Put his initials on the diamond. You get your revenge- he goes back to prison. And I stay out of it.”

“That won’t matter when you can’t produce the music box!”

“It was a spur of the moment decision! There were no other scapegoats readily available.” Garrett’s voice took on a dry tone. “Besides, it’s not like he can’t tell you just the same from a prison cell.”

Disgusted, Kate stormed off, screaming, “I wanted to see him suffer!”




Neal escaped. All was not lost. Kate broke the rule and showed up at Garrett’s FBI-provided temporary apartment to apologize. He invited her in and asked her to explain the appeal of hurting Neal.

“He’s pretty. And so perfect it’s unreal. He’s prettier when you can tell he’s human. But it’s not just the aesthetic value, it’s knowing he’d do anything, seeing he’d do anything. Knowing such a smart man can be so stupid if you pull the right strings- heart strings.”

Garrett nuzzled her neck. “You know that won’t work with me, right?”

“Yeah. But I love you. That’s one of the reasons I love you.”

She heard nothing more from Neal for a while, so she called him, gave him a reason to run: he was working right alongside the people who wanted to hurt her.

When Garrett burst in her hotel room, she knew Neal had gotten it wrong again. Neal had found out about Mentor, about Garrett’s attempt to discredit Peter Burke. Peter was a problem, was going to unravel this, didn’t have a two mile radius and wasn’t blinded by love. And, hopefully, if it looked like Neal was going to lose his parole, he might get desperate enough to part with the damned box.

“You promised this would be easy,” Garrett hissed in a low voice.

“It would’ve been.” Kate flipped another page in her magazine. “I overplayed the I’m in danger card a little is all. And, by the way, I’ve figured it out: he doesn’t have the music box,” Kate said it casually with her eyes on the page, but still saw the devastation in Garrett’s face. Hurting him was nothing like hurting Neal. It wasn’t fun, it wasn’t pretty, it didn’t prove anything, didn’t make her feel special. She stood. “He can find it, though. He was looking for it. A friend of ours, a fence, she knows a bit about it.”

Garrett swallowed and nodded and allowed her to hug him. “We’ll fix this,” she whispered. “It’ll be okay. Neal had Agent Burke contact me. I’ll pass along word for Neal to go to Alex.”

Two nights before Alex and Neal came through, Garrett turned to her in the bed in the hotel room and asked, “How are you going to get away from Neal when this is over?”

“Tell him I found someone else.”

“You think that will keep him away?”

Kate frowned. Kicking her puppy dog of an ex was an old game. She might want to play sometime in the future, but on her own terms. “He’s got a radius; we’re outside it.”

“For now.” Garrett hesitated.

“We’ve got more than three years to figure it out.”

“But we’ll never have an opportunity quite like this one. Hear me out, and if you don’t like it, it never has to come up again.”

Kate turned to Garrett, and even in the faint light coming from the street-side window, she could see the worry in his frown. “Okay.”

“Neal hands over the music box, we give him and you a free ride to another country and full immunity. He sees you on the plane, you climb out the back, and then? It explodes. You’re dead. He sees it. You get to watch him think he’s watching you d-” Kate kissed him on the mouth, cutting him off.

“That’s brilliant.” Kate rubbed up against Garrett, loving him for giving this to her, for not only thinking it wasn’t appalling, but for coming up with it himself.




Kate ducked out of the plane and waved, smiling to see the wildly happy look on Neal’s face. He looked so unreservedly blissful, like he was coming home after a long, painfully lonely journey, that Kate briefly considered just flying off with him for a while, letting him have a little of the happiness he thought he had finally earned before ‘dying.’ But this was a once-in-a-lifetime setup. And wouldn’t it be delicious, that after four years in prison and one year of worrying and desperate searching, she died before he even got to touch her, talk to her face to face, kiss her again?

She waved at him, drawing him towards the plane, ready to duck out and signal Garrett as soon as Neal was close enough, but Peter Burke showed up. And Neal, Neal whose heart he’d told her she alone owned, paused. But then loyal, loving Neal turned right back around and continued towards the plane. Everything was perfect- until he stopped and turned around again. Even from the tiny plane window, she could see Neal’s hesitant posture. Furious, she jumped off the plane and hit the trigger. She’d intended for him to be close enough for some shrapnel to hit him, to scratch his face so that when he mourned her, his face would stretch in ways it never had and, once it healed, never would again. It was his expressions that amused her the most, even if she couldn’t be around to see them.

She saw this one, though. Neal never looked so desperate, so devastated. She turned out to be grateful for Peter, who held Neal back, ensured he wouldn’t get killed. She never wanted him dead. Dead people didn’t mourn. Neal thought she had died, and he broke so beautifully. He clawed at Peter and struggled and thrashed and fought for her. She wished she had a camera.

Cruel, but not entirely heartless, she managed to be glad of the tears running down Peter’s face even though they were for Neal. Peter was going to be there for him and Neal would heal. Maybe when he was whole again, he’d be amusing once more. He just wasn’t the right kind of broken for her to love with all her cruel, fragmented heart, even now.

Neal was so focused on getting to Kate, he missed her entirely when she ran to the hidden car and Garrett drove off, a living, breathing Kate in the back, leaving behind a screaming, thrashing, crying, desperate, hysterical, beautiful creature.

Kate watched the smoke as they drove away. Neal had asked her to always come back, had made it clear that no wrong she could do was unforgivable except to never return. She wondered if making him think she couldn’t come back was bad enough to be an exception. A few tears that she couldn’t explain slipped down her cheeks.

Garrett pretended not to notice where Neal would’ve wiped them away with a gentle finger and quiet, reassuring words. For the first time, Kate questioned what she was doing to Neal- what she had done. What he’d done to deserve this, except to love her.