notgoingtorun | (no subject)

(no subject)

Neal had weathered disappearances before, ever since he first came to the island. Once Peter went, though, Neal began trying to harden himself against the inevitable, that people he cared about would go, and he had no say in it. In some respects, it was just like home: keep your ties light, so they can't be used against you.

He'd never been able to stop himself from falling for a beautiful woman, though, so even in that respect, the island was nothing new.

He hadn't lost anyone close to him in a while, but he knew it was rough for Kate and Lilo, and the disappearances made him think about things he couldn't promise: I'm never going anywhere, he wanted to say, but in this, he had to give up control to the island, and Neal had never excelled at letting anyone or anything have control over his life.

Neal stretched out in bed, a glass of wine on the bedside table, and a sheaf of papers in his lap. He sketched idly on the paper, not with any real intent other than taking his mind off of how overwhelmingly sad everyone seemed to be these days.

It was working; he was so focused on the drawing (and the wine) that he didn't hear Kate come in.

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"Con as good as you ought to know you put glasses in your back pocket, they end up broken," Kate sasses right back, tips her chin and grabs his bottom lip in her teeth, tugging him insistently into another kiss, harder than the first. Then she leans back and crosses her arms at her waist to pull her shirt off over her head. She remembers the first time they were together she did the same thing and grins at him. "Besides, we're not keeping secrets. So tell me something that you like."

Neal's hands skate against her skin. He can't get enough of her, he doesn't want to let go of her. He speaks in between kisses and light nips at her skin. "I like drinking wine and making sandcastles, sometimes at the same time. I like going to museums and figuring out how to rob them without getting caught. I like being a chameleon, fitting into whatever, wherever, whoever I need to be." His teeth graze against her collarbone. His lips slide up her neck. "I like the way you feel."

Most of it Kate knows already, but, "I like the way you talk," she tells him while she wrestles with his shirt between shivers and kisses. "I like the way the world seems like magic, that I seem like magic, in your words." Finally, she gets a break and his hands slide southward enough for her to open his buttons. She leans down to repay his torment in spades, nip-lick-kissing at the hollow of his throat and murmuring, "I like that you can be anyone for me, but all I need is who you already are."

He holds back a hiss as her lips press against his skin. "You are magic," he says, dropping his hands from her body for long enough to shrug out of his shirt, casting it aside behind him on the bed. Everything about her makes him a better person; it is magic, even if he doesn't quite know how to phrase it.

"You keep me honest," he says instead, before threading his hands into her hair and leaning in to kiss her.

In Neal's world -- in his new, better, reformed world, you keep me honest is about as high of a complement as he could give her.

"Nothing to lie about," Kate says when they come up for air, as if that explains everything. Nothing he could tell her would change how she feels, and she thinks now it's the same for him. Being honest like this is terrifying, but she's always been a fear junkie. It gets her hot. As kind of proof of concept, she pushes him back and mouths her way down her chest to his waistband. "Tell me the worst thing you've ever done."

Neal lets himself fall back onto the bed, and props himself up on his elbows, watching Kate move.

They're in the same boat, Neal and Kate; he has always thrived on fear and adrenaline. You couldn't make it as a con if you didn't, but you still had to do something with all of that extra energy afterwards.

This worked. This always worked.

Neal had always prided himself on being a gentleman thief; that is, he tried to ensure that his crimes had no real human toll, just financial. It didn't make him a good man, it just made him cautious. "Deprived countless museums and collectors of priceless pieces of art, because I could," he starts off with. It's weak, but it's his standard confession, and it's a little hard for him to think right now, as it is. "I abandoned my mother when I probably should have stayed, and instead I ran." It's odd for him to admit that with Kate hovering over him the way she does -- you shouldn't ever be thinking about your mother whenever your breath is coming in pants and gasps -- but he says it anyway. "I was close, so close, to just shooting the man I held responsible for taking away someone I loved, very much. I would have done it if no one had stepped in to stop me." On the grand scale of worst things, that's not too high up there for most people like Neal, but for someone who spent his entire career trying not to hurt anyone, trying to rise above at least that little bit of his father's blood, it was a horrifying thought, how close he was to shooting Fowler because he deserved it.

His fingers twisted in the sheets as he watched Kate intently. "You?" Turnabout is fair play, and if this is confessional time, they both need to be on the same page.

When he's done, Kate pauses, looks up from opening the button on his jeans. She flips an eyebrow up, like 'that's it?', but she slithers back up, straddles his hips (half glad she hasn't stripped him yet, half not), then leans down to kiss him slowly, without saying a word.

Neal's different than her. He's always had a conscience, and he's got a lot less to feel guilty about. Always risky, confessing, though, so she takes her time up kissing him, fingers threaded through his hair and mouth sweet on his -- almost like seducing a mark, but genuine.

She pulls back, gaze flicking up to his, and can't resist, goes back for another kiss, quick and sharp, before she sits up again. "I ran away from my mom, too. And my little brother, which is worse." Not even close to the worst thing she's done. Gotta start somewhere though.

Her shoulders tense, stomach twisting. There's crime and there's murder. Always a chance telling him could fuck things up. But she's been carrying this weight a long time. Her teeth graze her bottom lip, she exhales. "I, uh, fed a drug dealer, bookie, smuggler to a Sorkel." She shrugs defensively, before he can say anything. "He had something over my brother."

That's the thing that most people would think is worst. Kate, she's got a different scale. "I'd do it again," she says fiercely. "To protect Lilo and you."

She could wait, see how he responds. But he's hard under her and she needed him when she got here. Now or never. "I used to sell and smuggle Abnormals. Before I went to work for the white hats. But the worst thing..." Kate still cringes to think of it. "I only stayed at first because they promised me a steno tusk. And--" The last all comes out in a rush, eyes tragic with her desperation, "IspentalotoftimethinkingabouthowmuchBiggiewouldbeworthontheblackmarket."

It should be a lot to take in, but it isn't. He always knew Kate was harder than he was, that she inhabited a different part in the crime world than he ever could have.

But he knows how much it takes out of you to confess to thinks you've kept hidden for so long, and he respects that. He lets his hands settle at her waist as she speaks, fingers making soft circles against her skin until she finishes. Then he leans up to meet her and kisses her, soft and slow.

"None of that changes anything," he says, feeling the need to reassure her. "We all do what we have to do, even if it's not what other people would say is the right path." His hands are delicate on her, wanting to keep her close without holding her down. He kisses her again, harder this time. "I took the FBI's deal because I thought I could use it to my own ends, work my own angle, and I did. We played the same game, just in different circles."

Kate nods, even while he's still kissing her. For a few beats, she can't breathe with the crush of emotion surging at her. Kinda the feelings equivalent of that tidal wave in Mumbai. Then it recedes and Kate's free. He knows the only things he might not have been able to forgive.

"Damn." Her eyes shine but she's all heat and smiles for him, ducks her head to nip and kiss beneath his the hinge of his jaw. "Never told anyone else about that." In some way she can't really put a finger on, that makes her his even more than the Always. Her mouth marks the obvious extension - that he's hers - sucking hard over his pulse until it beats against the flat of her tongue.

She wraps her hands around his wrists, slides them up her body to cup their warmth against her breasts. "Think you should quit talking and use me to your own ends."

She makes him come undone in a way no one else has managed, and he wonders, not for the first time, how he's ever gotten so lucky.

It's a nice change from wondering when things were going to go terribly wrong, at least.

His fingers splay against her skin. "Thank you for trusting me with that, then," he says before leaning in, pressing his lips to her neck, trailing down her skin. "Your wish is my command." He lets one hand drop from her breast back to her hip, pulling her close, but replaces it quickly with lips and tongue.

The snakes in her belly quiet, charmed by his mouth, his lips and tongue against her skin. She threads her fingers into his hair to hold him, makes a low, soft sound in her throat to share her appreciation. Guys are pigs about tits, but once they have them, they usually don't know what to do with them. Neal knows.

Oh gods he knows, and knows her, knows exactly what he's doing to her. She's so easy for him. Wet already and wanting. But she knows him, too. Good things come to Kates who wait. Who let Neal decide what he wants. Later, maybe, she'll decide, but for now, she's good, happy to slide her hand down his shoulder and arch toward him, encourage him to keep that up, unless or until he wants something else.

He wants to make her feel like he worships her. It's the honest truth, he does, and it's the way it always is for him. He can do quick and hard and fast, sure, but even then, he wants her to know, always, that this is more than just fucking; he wants to say with his hands and his lips and his tongue what he can't always find the words to express.

Neal lets his free hand slide around her hip to palm flat between her legs, pressing up against the warm heat of her, and he wants her so bad it aches, right down to his core. If he had his way, they'd spend all of their time in bed, to hell with their other responsibilities. That's not the way the world works, of course -- he's an idealist but he's seen to much to not have a dash of realist in him -- but a boy can dream.

Stupid simple, the touch of his hand against her through her jeans. It should make her laugh, mock, because it's been about a thousand years since she was innocent enough for it to do anything for her. Except it does everything for her.

He's like... like a teenaged guy in love with a kama sutra master skills. Sometimes she doesn't know what to do with how he touches her, adores her. Today's not one of those days.

She ducks her head to bite -- softly -- at his neck, pull a harder kiss off it, then squirms free of his grasp to get out of her jeans. Fast. She wants him, wants him touching her without barriers. The teen make-out thing is hot for awhile, but third base is calling and home.

When her jeans hit the floor, she hooks her finger through his belt loop. "Off," she murmurs and then drops herself on the bed on her back, arms and legs spread wide enough to make an invitation. "Off, and then you can take all the time you want."

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