A/N: I read a very interesting piece of writing advice today, from Chuck Palahniuk, which challenged writers to avoid thought verbs-i.e., think, want, imagine, etc.-for more concrete showing over telling. He also said to avoid the words love and hate. This was REALLY tough for me, but I wanted to give it a shot! I bookended the fic with those words and otherwise tried to keep them out of it. Not wholly successfully, but it was fun to try.
Sometimes, Neal wonders if Kate loves him.
(Mostly, not in so many words.)
...
Kate smiles when she's getting angry, and her eyes widen and darken. That's when Neal sucks in a breath, puts away his own smile and tries for earnest instead to find his way out of it. He needs a way out of it, because Kate angry means that Kate sits on the couch, toying with the tattered edges of a stolen manuscript instead of plotting the next gig with Neal and Mozzie.
"What shift in the weather brings on yonder storm cloud?" Mozzie inquires, tugging his mouth into a grimace. It's three o'clock in the afternoon, there's a truck with a shipment of Italian crystal goblets that should net them enough until next time.
Next time keeps them going.
"I pissed her off," Neal admits. A secret kept; Alex called, asking again about Copenhagen.
They can't nab the glassware without Kate. She called the shots with one slender ankle crossed over the other, a tight smile on her lips. No gig; the game is off.
Neal doesn't sleep that night. Kate kisses him good morning.
"You're forgiven," she says. Neal's heart throbs; he kisses her back. (He always kisses her back.)
Forgiveness, though, can't get them to next time.
...
So Neal goes to Copenhagen. He travels alone. The man in the seat beside him sleeps through the flight. Kate called him a con when he told her. "Told her" may not be quite right; he spun straw, reaching for gold, and it fell through his hands.
Neal's eyes are propped open, despite the weariness he must wear off with rest and coffee. Alex waits in Europe. Readiness is not optional.
Kate beside him would be a hand in his, her skin warm and soft. Kate beside him would be a fancier hotel than he will allow himself, alone.
Kate is in New York. Neal lands in Denmark, and another woman runs into his arms. They planned it that way, him and Alex. A cover, for everyone but themselves.
Alex's lips brush against Neal's cheek, Alex's fingers tug at Neal's collar, Alex stands in front of him and he closes his eyes to put Kate somewhere real, on a gray New York sidewalk, or better yet, in his arms.
But that, he cannot create or forge from the ashes of the plans he spins.
Kate, when asked, said no.
...
Copenhagen closes iron arms, and nearly iron bars, around its elusive treasure. Alex, Neal leaves on the other side of the sea. He orders flowers and sends them to the hospital.
It cannot get them to next time.
New York's sidewalks thrive with bustling tourists, with slick-suited businessmen, with high heels that catch and snap in crisscrossed grates.
"She's gone," Mozzie says, hollow.
As though Neal had not already seen the sidewalks, the parks and the near-limitless skyscrapers, all without Kate.
Neal forgives Kate, Alex forgives Neal. If it is for the same reason, Neal is not puzzling it out. Neal is chasing the streets, the secrets, the smile that Kate gets when she's about to be angry.
...
Neal steals gems. Neal copies the masters. Neal throws a hat in every ring that will have him, and then rocks back on heels, to the next nearest point of imbalance, waiting for the sound of applause.
There is only one audience member.
She never shows.
Neal's heart might well beat its way out of his chest one day. Neal used to kiss Kate and didn't watch the world around him, even to see if it faded.
Kate watched everything.
Perhaps she watches this, too. But she signals no applause. Dazzling Kate is no longer as easy as a necklace that disappears and reappears.
The reappearance matters now, more than anything else. Neal throws his hat into another ring.
...
Kate leans against the corrugated steel storage locker, silent, unsmiling. Tears well up in her eyes; Neal nearly shudders under that curious twinge in his chest that only she calls out.
Cold metal closes around his wrists. A rush, not like the con. This is freefall, a more dangerous high that resembles a cliff in the moment of a leap more than anything else.
Her pain is his, it always has been. If his pain is hers, or ever has been, Neal uses those last precious seconds to memorize the downturned corners of her lips, the curve of her fingers.
Time is the only thing they give him. Time enough, maybe, to read the truth between the words that Kate has said aloud, time and again.
Neal despairs every week. But every week Kate visits, and the light lasts longer those days, sunlight creeping in.
...
Neal misses Kate by two days. This is a tragedy of a final act. If Kate was watching, even she might be drawn to grudging applause—the Shakespearean farce of a prisoner who squandered time served like so many pennies, and all for a bottle, and a message, and the repeat after-taste of the no-show in the empty audience.
...
Two can play at the game. Neal plays. Kate answers no questions without asking new ones. Neal traces heaven and earth and the criminal underworld for the music box she always spited.
He smiles against winter sunshine, too bright for sight, when he hears that Kate has cut a deal for both of them.
It can only mean one thing. Neal keeps smiling, until the world ends.
It doesn't take very long.
...
There is too much. The sharp assault of smoke and smell that only comes with an oil fire, the grit of asphalt tacking his hands and knees, the cry ripped out of his throat that only finds its way around one word.
Her name. Her name, her face, her smile, her secrets.
Theirlife.
Debris tumbles and floats from the sky; the heat is more bearable, now, if nothing else is. There is a rumble and groan of destruction that pounds like thunder in Neal's ears.
Peter's hands wrap around his arms, tugging him back, holding him steady. But Neal seeks the pavement again, hands and knees returning to the bite of asphalt and glass and ash. His eyes water and sting. Smoke and tears; in his life of blood and water, blood runs thicker. Enough to make his heart keep beating, beating, beating, relentless and alive, but not enough to get them to next time.
...
Mostly, Neal thinks Kate loved him.
(Sometimes, he wonders how much.)