Title: Fairy tales
Fandom: White Collar
Rating: G
Length: 680 words
Note: Neal/Kate. Spoilers for 2.11. Also for sprat's prompt "Where do you think you're going?"
Summary: She'd be asleep soon. There was still time.

Fairy tales

Outside, afternoon had passed into evening and the streetlights were coming on, illuminating the traffic in its impatient stop-and-start shuffle homeward, but here, inside, in Neal's bed with the covers pulled up and the air rich with the scent of sex, there was lamplight accentuating the perfect curve of Kate's cheek and her hair spilling across Neal's chest like loose strands of midnight. He stroked her head and pressed his lips to her temple, still barely believing that she really was here with him, and not halfway to Chicago with Michael. This was how it felt not to be alone. This was pure happiness—or almost pure.

He waited until her eyelashes fanned her cheeks and her breathing evened out, and gradually, with infinite care, he started inching out her of embrace. He didn't want to—he'd die here if he could, on these rumpled, sweaty sheets with her head pillowed on his shoulder—but he couldn't risk putting it off any longer.

Before he'd got even a leg free, her hand slid up the slope of his shoulder and held him in place. "Where do you think you're going, Nick?" she murmured sleepily. Her earring moved against her jaw as she spoke. She was still wearing her earrings.

Neal froze for a split second, then forced his body to relax into her embrace, deferring to his own desires as much as her implicit request. "Nowhere. I'm staying right here."

"Good." She smiled without opening her eyes and stretched out against him.

Neal tried to calm down. She'd be asleep soon. There was still time. But his brain was on high alert now, vividly aware of his plain apartment, cluttered with incrimination: the pile of forged bonds tucked into the World Atlas on the bookshelf; the boxes of paintbrushes and ink and printing plates from old jobs; the half-finished Raphael, inspired by Neal's first meeting with the woman now lying in his arms; the research on Adler and the growing file of information on Agent Peter Burke, FBI; the hollowed-out book with its bundle of ready cash; the multiple passports Mozzie had insisted Neal acquire; the origami flower from Alex; the absence of framed photos; the bills and old IDs, the call history on his phone, even the clothes in his closet and the bottles in his makeshift wine rack felt like evidence that Neal wasn't Nick, that she shouldn't trust him.

"I love you," he breathed, so quietly she wouldn't hear, and as he said it, he accepted its implications: his fate wasn't his own. Everything hinged on Kate now, and there was nothing he could do but to make her love him back, love him so deeply that when he told her the truth, she'd still be anchored to him. She'd still believe he was a purveyor of magic, not cheap tricks. She'd still trust him with her heart in return.

As if she'd heard his silent declaration, she stirred and turned her head to kiss his neck. "You're tense. What's wrong?"

"I was going to straighten up," said Neal. "My place is a mess. I don't want you to see it like this."

"Scared I'm going to go through your stuff and find out all your secrets?" There was a lazy smile in her tone. It wasn't a threat. But it still thrilled and alarmed Neal.

"No."

"Yes, you are." She nuzzled him, then propped her chin on her hand and looked down with heavy eyes and a Sphinx expression. "I want to know all about you, Nick Halden, right down to the bones. I asked around, and no one even knows where you came from."

"Then I'll tell you," said Neal. He raised his head to kiss her, and then lay back, eyes on the ceiling, and told her stories about his life, his family, where he'd come from and where he was going, wishing with all his heart that he could be this man for her, this fictional creation, and that the stories he told were true.


END