He Lies Waiting
Title: He Lies Waiting
Author: eldorah
Rating: PG
Pairings/Characters: Neal/Kate, Mozzie
Word Count: 1,978
Spoilers: None
Warnings: deals with homesickness, loneliness
Summary: A heart sore for home has the longest wait to endure. Written for the homesickness square on my H/C Bingo Card.
A/N: Beta'd by the wonderful rose_of_sharon1, my never-ending source of writing encouragement and guidance. All remaining mistakes are mine.
Disclaimer: White Collar and its characters are not mine - they are the property of Jeff Eastin and USA Network. Just having a little fun, I promise.
Neal lies awake in the early hours of the morning as the sound of the rain hitting the window taps out a gentle rhythm a few inches from his ear. Beside him, Kate is sleeping, with her slender fingers intertwined in the light blue mulberry silk sheet she bought last week with the reaping from a recent art heist.
He remembers that she had been so happy when she first brought the set home, pulling Neal seductively into the bed and kissing him teasingly on his lips until he admitted he adored it too. She had bought it because it was luxuriously soft and fancy, and the glimmer it caught from the sunlight made her feel like a princess in a private house along the Cote d’Azur.
“Don’t you just feel like royalty?” she had asked, her eyes flirtatious and wild and charmingly innocent as she wrapped her body in glistening blue.
“With you, I always feel like royalty,” Neal had responded gracefully, “But yes, I love the sheets.”
“Don’t they remind you of our time on the Cote d’Azur?” Kate had probed with pouting lips, still unsatisfied with his answer.
“No,” Neal had replied smoothly, leaning into her embrace, “They remind me of your eyes, shimmering like stars, bluer than the ocean, and softer than anything else I have ever seen.”
This answer she had found satisfactory, and he remembers now that she had rewarded him with a deep, passionate kiss that made him shiver and left him yearning for more.
Now, he delicately traces his fingertips along the contours of her face as she sleeps beside him, starting first with her fine cheekbone and slowly making his way down to her chin. This slight touch awakes her with a giggle, and the way the moonlight dances across her face is breathtaking.
“Neal,” she says, still trapped in a blissful, somnolent fog, “Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”
“How can I sleep when you are so beautiful?” he asks, brushing his lips lightly along the top of her hand.
And then she leans in as if to kiss him back, but he never quite feels if she did.
-------------------------------------------------
Neal looks around at his bland apartment. Kate is spending the day out on the town despite the rain with a friend she has known since childhood. Neal is terribly lonely without her and these stark white walls just enhance his displeasure. They recently moved into this dwelling, a one-bedroom in the West Village, and the rent is so astronomically far above what their routine income says they can afford. However, Kate has fallen in love with the quaint, 19th century-styled buildings and the quiet, serene atmosphere of this neighborhood. And Neal, well, he has fallen in love with Kate, so quickly and so steeply that skydiving without a parachute might have brought on less of an emotional rush, so if she wants to live in a pricey single bedroom in the West Village, so does he.
Truthfully, Neal knows he can deal with the price. Obtaining money for rent is as simple as picking the right target out of a sea of lucrative brokers down on Wall Street. The white, undecorated, painfully monotonous walls, however, are slowly killing him in a gruesome way. They rob his brain of creativity, dampen his spark, and hinder his intelligence.
So today, Neal decides, he is going to do a little interior decorating.
He gets out his paints and brushes from their spot in the closet and a tape measurer from the duffel bag he used in their latest heist. Right above their TV, he traces a small rectangle, roughly 28 by 22 centimeters. Inside of the rectangle, he uses his acrylics to create something he hopes will give the stark wall a little personality and vitality. He paints a statue, their statue, the very same one that hides Kate’s engagement ring.
Someday, probably well after he reclaims that ring from this statue and rehomes it permanently on Kate’s left hand, he will bring home the painting that fits these dimensions. He will use it to cover over this temporary installment and no new visitor to their home will ever be the wiser to its existence. But each time Neal and Kate look at Raphael’s St. George and the Dragon, they will remember the statue as well, and celebrate just how far they have come together.
After finishing his masterpiece, the artist slumps onto the couch to wait for Kate’s return. If she likes it, he will paint more throughout the apartment using the dimensions of the paintings they hope to collect together. Slowly but surely, he will make a home of this place for her. They will grow old together here, he is quite certain.
About an hour later, the door opens and Neal quickly turns to catch his girlfriend’s face. The new wall painting is immediately in her line of sight, and he does not want to miss a single moment of her reaction. Her eyes widen, and she opens her mouth to speak to him. However, he never really hears what she says.
-------------------------------------------------
Mozzie is sprawled on his couch, half drunk from cheap wine as he indiscriminately recites poetry aloud, the words slurring together in a way that rips apart the cadence. Kate sleeps in the bedroom, twisted up in baby blue sheets and a soft down comforter. Neal sits on the floor in the living room, relaxed and staring at acrylic paintings inside rectangles scattered on the walls throughout his apartment. The smell of a margarita pie and a sweet Sutter Home red still linger in the air, and the aroma of rain slowly wafts through their open window. The lights are off and candles are lit, and from the street, it appears as if no one is home. It is safer this way for all three of them, he thinks.
Neal sighs contentedly as Mozzie momentarily breaks from his recitations to ask Neal if he could go anywhere in the world without worrying about the Suit, where it would be.
Neal lays his head back against the wall and thinks for a moment. He hears his girlfriend murmur in her sleep on the other side and he smiles. The beaches and the palaces are grand, extraordinary places to be, and he and Kate in all their exquisite beauty fit seamlessly into those affluent locations, he knows. But nothing competes with this right now. This is his home, and he never wants to leave it.
He starts to try to explain this to Moz, but somehow, the words never come.
-------------------------------------------------
Neal awakes gently, his body having yet to recognize the hard, barely padded mat on cement that has been his bed for two years now. Absently, he registers that the sheet he is curled in is scratchy and rough, and he thinks that later today he ought to investigate whether or not it is time to replace it. Kate will be sad; these sheets have been theirs since the start of their life together. He instinctively reaches out his hand to connect with hers, but he startles when his fist slams into an icy cement wall instead. The dull pain beats on his knuckles like a drum as he traces his fingers along the surface to orient himself.
And then he remembers.
There is no more mulberry silk sheet the color of the water that graces the French Riviera. There are no more acrylic paintings that hold places for much greater aspirations to adorn his walls. He no longer has a couch for Mozzie to take over and ramble upon, and he has not tasted the likings of a margarita pizza pie in two years.
He can no longer retreat into the safety of the dark, nor can he bask in the waltzing flame of a candle. No longer can he reach out and touch the woman he loves, tracing his hand across her beautiful face and cherishing each of her breaths as she rests beside him. No longer does he hear Mozzie drunkenly stumble through Wordsworth, destroy Yeats, dismember Whitman.
Instead, these memories of his former life have all been but a dream tonight, and a jail cell made of cold cement and wrought iron rails coupled with a bottomless feeling of loneliness is the reality that has taken their place.
He no longer has a place to call home.
Neal sits up in bed and pushes his palms into his eyes, trying to wake himself in vain hope that this is all just a nightmare. Six inches to his right, however, pelting rain resonates loudly on the tiny rectangular window as if to verify his reality. Desperately, he scours his mind for something to look forward to in an attempt to change the direction of his thoughts, but he comes up empty. The feeling of isolation has already taken hold and trying to escape it is of no use.
That familiar cramping soon forms a knot in the back of his throat as he looks around his dark cell. He misses his home in a desperate, grieving way that only intensifies the more he dreams, thinks, or hears about it. His days are filled with monotony, his nights filled with pain. His yearnings for home overwhelm every fiber of his being and he swears that sometimes he can actually see, feel, and hear the memories that refuse to give his mind reprieve. He wonders sometimes if he is actually going insane, or if it is all too much to handle.
Mozzie will come tomorrow, but he’d almost rather he didn’t. He will go on and on about how this fence is a rat and that heist was a bust, mention something about needing to liquidate more assets and then assure Neal he is working on a solution to his current predicament. Mozzie thinks that this takes Neal’s mind off of things for a while, but it only makes it all hurt more.
Kate will surely stop by too, but lately, her words have been terse and they cut like knives deep into his skin. He does his best to comfort her; he tells her it will all be okay, but he always falls short of making her feel better. She hates the color orange and she deserves more than this, he knows. He is sickened with guilt that he cannot go home to her every night, and despite their strained conversation, the goodbye is always the hardest.
Silent tears streak down his face now and he lays his head back down on his hard pillow. His nails dig craters into his palms as he tries to suppress the tears. His body shakes with a repressed sob as he stares absently out the window, but all he can see are metal bars that the moon illuminates with just a hint of light. He hopes he might see a star outside to give him a glimmer of hope, but there is no such thing tonight.
He doesn’t know what time it is or how long it will be until the sunlight marks a new day, but there is no way he can allow himself to go back to sleep now. Most evenings, sleep brings him back to the place and people with whom he left his heart and made a home but reality is always too much to bear when the dream suddenly dissipates. So instead, he stares the ceiling, with his heart bleeding and his mind in constant turmoil.
He lies waiting for the sun to rise again, signifying that he made it through one more night wrought with aching memories.
He lies waiting for another long, monotonous day, which will offer no analgesia for his homesick heart.
He lies waiting for the day he can return home, and this is the hardest to endure.
Author: eldorah
Rating: PG
Pairings/Characters: Neal/Kate, Mozzie
Word Count: 1,978
Spoilers: None
Warnings: deals with homesickness, loneliness
Summary: A heart sore for home has the longest wait to endure. Written for the homesickness square on my H/C Bingo Card.
A/N: Beta'd by the wonderful rose_of_sharon1, my never-ending source of writing encouragement and guidance. All remaining mistakes are mine.
Disclaimer: White Collar and its characters are not mine - they are the property of Jeff Eastin and USA Network. Just having a little fun, I promise.
Neal lies awake in the early hours of the morning as the sound of the rain hitting the window taps out a gentle rhythm a few inches from his ear. Beside him, Kate is sleeping, with her slender fingers intertwined in the light blue mulberry silk sheet she bought last week with the reaping from a recent art heist.
He remembers that she had been so happy when she first brought the set home, pulling Neal seductively into the bed and kissing him teasingly on his lips until he admitted he adored it too. She had bought it because it was luxuriously soft and fancy, and the glimmer it caught from the sunlight made her feel like a princess in a private house along the Cote d’Azur.
“Don’t you just feel like royalty?” she had asked, her eyes flirtatious and wild and charmingly innocent as she wrapped her body in glistening blue.
“With you, I always feel like royalty,” Neal had responded gracefully, “But yes, I love the sheets.”
“Don’t they remind you of our time on the Cote d’Azur?” Kate had probed with pouting lips, still unsatisfied with his answer.
“No,” Neal had replied smoothly, leaning into her embrace, “They remind me of your eyes, shimmering like stars, bluer than the ocean, and softer than anything else I have ever seen.”
This answer she had found satisfactory, and he remembers now that she had rewarded him with a deep, passionate kiss that made him shiver and left him yearning for more.
Now, he delicately traces his fingertips along the contours of her face as she sleeps beside him, starting first with her fine cheekbone and slowly making his way down to her chin. This slight touch awakes her with a giggle, and the way the moonlight dances across her face is breathtaking.
“Neal,” she says, still trapped in a blissful, somnolent fog, “Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”
“How can I sleep when you are so beautiful?” he asks, brushing his lips lightly along the top of her hand.
And then she leans in as if to kiss him back, but he never quite feels if she did.
-------------------------------------------------
Neal looks around at his bland apartment. Kate is spending the day out on the town despite the rain with a friend she has known since childhood. Neal is terribly lonely without her and these stark white walls just enhance his displeasure. They recently moved into this dwelling, a one-bedroom in the West Village, and the rent is so astronomically far above what their routine income says they can afford. However, Kate has fallen in love with the quaint, 19th century-styled buildings and the quiet, serene atmosphere of this neighborhood. And Neal, well, he has fallen in love with Kate, so quickly and so steeply that skydiving without a parachute might have brought on less of an emotional rush, so if she wants to live in a pricey single bedroom in the West Village, so does he.
Truthfully, Neal knows he can deal with the price. Obtaining money for rent is as simple as picking the right target out of a sea of lucrative brokers down on Wall Street. The white, undecorated, painfully monotonous walls, however, are slowly killing him in a gruesome way. They rob his brain of creativity, dampen his spark, and hinder his intelligence.
So today, Neal decides, he is going to do a little interior decorating.
He gets out his paints and brushes from their spot in the closet and a tape measurer from the duffel bag he used in their latest heist. Right above their TV, he traces a small rectangle, roughly 28 by 22 centimeters. Inside of the rectangle, he uses his acrylics to create something he hopes will give the stark wall a little personality and vitality. He paints a statue, their statue, the very same one that hides Kate’s engagement ring.
Someday, probably well after he reclaims that ring from this statue and rehomes it permanently on Kate’s left hand, he will bring home the painting that fits these dimensions. He will use it to cover over this temporary installment and no new visitor to their home will ever be the wiser to its existence. But each time Neal and Kate look at Raphael’s St. George and the Dragon, they will remember the statue as well, and celebrate just how far they have come together.
After finishing his masterpiece, the artist slumps onto the couch to wait for Kate’s return. If she likes it, he will paint more throughout the apartment using the dimensions of the paintings they hope to collect together. Slowly but surely, he will make a home of this place for her. They will grow old together here, he is quite certain.
About an hour later, the door opens and Neal quickly turns to catch his girlfriend’s face. The new wall painting is immediately in her line of sight, and he does not want to miss a single moment of her reaction. Her eyes widen, and she opens her mouth to speak to him. However, he never really hears what she says.
-------------------------------------------------
Mozzie is sprawled on his couch, half drunk from cheap wine as he indiscriminately recites poetry aloud, the words slurring together in a way that rips apart the cadence. Kate sleeps in the bedroom, twisted up in baby blue sheets and a soft down comforter. Neal sits on the floor in the living room, relaxed and staring at acrylic paintings inside rectangles scattered on the walls throughout his apartment. The smell of a margarita pie and a sweet Sutter Home red still linger in the air, and the aroma of rain slowly wafts through their open window. The lights are off and candles are lit, and from the street, it appears as if no one is home. It is safer this way for all three of them, he thinks.
Neal sighs contentedly as Mozzie momentarily breaks from his recitations to ask Neal if he could go anywhere in the world without worrying about the Suit, where it would be.
Neal lays his head back against the wall and thinks for a moment. He hears his girlfriend murmur in her sleep on the other side and he smiles. The beaches and the palaces are grand, extraordinary places to be, and he and Kate in all their exquisite beauty fit seamlessly into those affluent locations, he knows. But nothing competes with this right now. This is his home, and he never wants to leave it.
He starts to try to explain this to Moz, but somehow, the words never come.
-------------------------------------------------
Neal awakes gently, his body having yet to recognize the hard, barely padded mat on cement that has been his bed for two years now. Absently, he registers that the sheet he is curled in is scratchy and rough, and he thinks that later today he ought to investigate whether or not it is time to replace it. Kate will be sad; these sheets have been theirs since the start of their life together. He instinctively reaches out his hand to connect with hers, but he startles when his fist slams into an icy cement wall instead. The dull pain beats on his knuckles like a drum as he traces his fingers along the surface to orient himself.
And then he remembers.
There is no more mulberry silk sheet the color of the water that graces the French Riviera. There are no more acrylic paintings that hold places for much greater aspirations to adorn his walls. He no longer has a couch for Mozzie to take over and ramble upon, and he has not tasted the likings of a margarita pizza pie in two years.
He can no longer retreat into the safety of the dark, nor can he bask in the waltzing flame of a candle. No longer can he reach out and touch the woman he loves, tracing his hand across her beautiful face and cherishing each of her breaths as she rests beside him. No longer does he hear Mozzie drunkenly stumble through Wordsworth, destroy Yeats, dismember Whitman.
Instead, these memories of his former life have all been but a dream tonight, and a jail cell made of cold cement and wrought iron rails coupled with a bottomless feeling of loneliness is the reality that has taken their place.
He no longer has a place to call home.
Neal sits up in bed and pushes his palms into his eyes, trying to wake himself in vain hope that this is all just a nightmare. Six inches to his right, however, pelting rain resonates loudly on the tiny rectangular window as if to verify his reality. Desperately, he scours his mind for something to look forward to in an attempt to change the direction of his thoughts, but he comes up empty. The feeling of isolation has already taken hold and trying to escape it is of no use.
That familiar cramping soon forms a knot in the back of his throat as he looks around his dark cell. He misses his home in a desperate, grieving way that only intensifies the more he dreams, thinks, or hears about it. His days are filled with monotony, his nights filled with pain. His yearnings for home overwhelm every fiber of his being and he swears that sometimes he can actually see, feel, and hear the memories that refuse to give his mind reprieve. He wonders sometimes if he is actually going insane, or if it is all too much to handle.
Mozzie will come tomorrow, but he’d almost rather he didn’t. He will go on and on about how this fence is a rat and that heist was a bust, mention something about needing to liquidate more assets and then assure Neal he is working on a solution to his current predicament. Mozzie thinks that this takes Neal’s mind off of things for a while, but it only makes it all hurt more.
Kate will surely stop by too, but lately, her words have been terse and they cut like knives deep into his skin. He does his best to comfort her; he tells her it will all be okay, but he always falls short of making her feel better. She hates the color orange and she deserves more than this, he knows. He is sickened with guilt that he cannot go home to her every night, and despite their strained conversation, the goodbye is always the hardest.
Silent tears streak down his face now and he lays his head back down on his hard pillow. His nails dig craters into his palms as he tries to suppress the tears. His body shakes with a repressed sob as he stares absently out the window, but all he can see are metal bars that the moon illuminates with just a hint of light. He hopes he might see a star outside to give him a glimmer of hope, but there is no such thing tonight.
He doesn’t know what time it is or how long it will be until the sunlight marks a new day, but there is no way he can allow himself to go back to sleep now. Most evenings, sleep brings him back to the place and people with whom he left his heart and made a home but reality is always too much to bear when the dream suddenly dissipates. So instead, he stares the ceiling, with his heart bleeding and his mind in constant turmoil.
He lies waiting for the sun to rise again, signifying that he made it through one more night wrought with aching memories.
He lies waiting for another long, monotonous day, which will offer no analgesia for his homesick heart.
He lies waiting for the day he can return home, and this is the hardest to endure.