(no subject)

[notgoingtorun]

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.

Comments

[girlsolo]

The hell of it is, she does know. She knows he means it, and she believes it. Her hands curl around his wrists, slide down his arms, like a slow motion collision stopped by his hands on her face. "Go figure," she says, stroking the insides of his arms with her thumbs. "Two cons gone straight fall in love on a magic island. Sounds like a bad B movie." To be fair, Will used to say their lives were like a bad B movie.

"You sure you're not gonna start banging your male best friend or marry your boss?" It's cheeky, but there's an undercurrent of something real there. Kate believes him, yeah. But it hasn't sunk in yet, and it's gonna take more than him saying it to erase the marks other people have left on her heart.

[notgoingtorun]

"It does sound like that, but it couldn't possibly be any worse than Tiles of Fire, volumes one through five." He laughs to himself -- it's a joke he doesn't expect Kate to get, as they're Mozzie's favorite movies, and Neal could barely make it through one of them. "What I'm saying is that I'm reasonably certain that we're better than badly dubbed Asian movies about Pai Gow."

He pulls one hand back, puts it over his heart, sincerely. "I promise I will do neither of those things, cross my heart." He likes Mozzie and Peter, but not like that, and even if he did, well, they're not here now, are they? "Just you. Always you."

[girlsolo]

Kate's eyebrow sweeps upward and she's about to smart off about not knowing they made any movies about Pai Gow, but then he goes and says that. She might not be surprised about him loving her, but... Always?

Just that quickly, there's a shudder through her core. Always is huge. Always is the kind of thing the island loves to fuck with. Always is... everything she wants, everything she wants for Lilo. Fuck. Her hand drops, fingers curl in his shirt and grip tightly, and for a few seconds, she can't find words at all.

When she does, it's to protest, "It shouldn't be so easy. Always. Why does it feel easy with you?"

[notgoingtorun]

Neal watches the thoughts flit across Kate's face and thinks that he's fucked it up, that he's said the wrong thing entirely. He can't help it; he's just speaking with his heart, and sometimes his heart is about ten steps ahead of everything else. It's not always a good quality, jumping in feet first and hoping that everyone else follows him in.

She relaxes enough that Neal feels the panic subside, just enough to breathe. Neal wraps his hands around hers, still clutched in his shirt, and he tries to think of a way to articulate something that he is fairly sure that he knew instinctively, before they even slept together, back when they were just doing the will-they-won't-they dance.

He thinks over his words carefully, almost desperate to say the right thing, to find the words that will make all of their puzzle pieces slot exactly into place. "It's easy because we match," he says finally, thumbs sliding gently across her knuckles. "Even before I came clean about who I was, you already knew exactly what you were dealing with. We can't bullshit each other. We both know the game too well." Neal uncurls one of her hands from his shirt and lifts it to his lips, pressing a soft kiss to the tips of her fingers. "The way I see it, it's easy for me because I finally don't have to hide anything. Not from you."

[girlsolo]

Before his nose even creases the way it does when he's worrying about something, Kate knows she scared him. He's being too careful, thinking too much. They both do that when they're trying to say just the right thing. Or not say the wrong thing, anyway.

He lifts her hand, kisses it, and she strokes the line of his jaw to tell him it's okay. Might be Lilo, might be love, might be both, but the quickest way to settle Kate down is for one of them to be upset. At his waist, her hand uncurls, releases his shirt and smoothes it down against the flat of his abs, soothing, reassuring, putting things back in place.

"We fit," she agrees, because that's just it. They do and they always have. "I never feel..." Never feels what? Inferior? Judged? Talking about feelings sucks. "We've both done things we're working off. It would be so easy for us to slide back into the old ways and patterns, but we dont. We make each other stronger..." Kate shrugs finally, looking painfully awkward, then gives up and goes back to being everyday Kate. She's who Neal fell in love with anyway. "And the sex is phenomenal."

[notgoingtorun]

Neal exhales, a breath he didn't even know he was holding. For as smooth as he was, for as good as he did at talking himself into and out of any given scenario, sometimes he felt completely over his head. Neal loved having good things -- good people -- in his life, but he was terrible at keeping them.

Maybe this time, it would be different.

He feels the shift in their conversation -- they've passed that hurdle of the serious and heartfelt. They're okay. They'll be okay.

"That is a pretty big plus," he says with a laugh. "I mean, all that other stuff -- truth and honesty -- that's great. But the sex, that's pretty key."

[girlsolo]

He laughs and she lets out a breath, tension sliding off her shoulders and warmth piercing the cold in her belly. He's okay and they're okay, and even more importantly, she doesn't have to 'we need to talk' anymore.

Her mouth twists into a playful smirk. "So if I stopped putting out, that would be a problem for you?" No chance of it happening, which they both know. Hell, she's feeling the damned flutters and sparks already.

[notgoingtorun]

Neal slides one hand through Kate's hair, then lets his fingers trail down her neck, across her collarbone. "I think we'd have to have a very long, serious, boring talk," he says before leaning forward, letting his lips follow the path his fingers just took. "It would be incredibly tedious. I was a professor once or twice, I know how to make things unbearably boring." He glances up at her, smile playing across his lips. "I think it's best if we just avoid that altogether."

[girlsolo]

"I'm all for avoiding boring," Kate agrees, a hitch in her voice as her hand slides into his hair, natural as breathing. They just fit. "But you do look damned hot in your glasses." She bends her head, craning it to reach his mouth, seal them together with the kiss she's wanted since before they said the L word. The caress of his lips soothes away so much hurt. Why did she wait? Isn't he contractually obligated to respond to her kisses or something now? He said always.

[notgoingtorun]

He chuckles, his laugh muffled by her skin before he leans back up. "I'll have to keep that in mind," Neal says, and his hands go to the hem of her shirt. "It's a good card to have in my back pocket, just in case."

Neal leans forward, presses his forehead to Kate's, leans in close, their lips just barely separated. "You're a better con than that, you should know to keep some secrets."

[girlsolo]

"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."

[notgoingtorun]

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."

[girlsolo]

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."

[notgoingtorun]

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.

[girlsolo]

"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."

[notgoingtorun]

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.

[girlsolo]

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."

[notgoingtorun]

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."

[girlsolo]

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."

[notgoingtorun]

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.

[girlsolo]

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.

[notgoingtorun]

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.

[girlsolo]

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."