This has been sitting in my wip folder for a while now, and to be honest, idek what this was supposed to be. Warning for 2nd person POV and well, topics of ownership and slight bondage (nothing explicit or triggering though). :)

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It's no Secret (You're It)

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He has a moral compass pointing north when you are looking lost, half submerged in the dark looking for another way out.

He has something called control when you have the equivalence of impulsiveness in spades. And it is nothing but a game to you when you wear tight suits with waistcoats and play with handcuffs in his face. Dangling the silver tight around your wrist, you have yourself convinced that it means nothing, and then it marks red lines into your skin, like you wish he would.

Instead, he takes your hands away from yourself.

Working the lock with a key even when he knows you can have it unlocked, three seconds flat, eyes closed and maybe even upside down. But that's not the point.

The point is that you can run, but you don't.

It is also that he can set you free, but he won't.

And it is with fascination that you know he sees everything, so you make it your goal to remind him that he's caught you. Once. Twice. Thrice (and that it pleases you every time). Oh, it's the curve of your lips, that half-smile you can't completely hide, let alone vanish like a sleight of hand.

When the key in his hand unlocks the cuffs around your wrists, you're at a loss of what to do, too confused by his good intentions to know which is in your right to take. So you run to the fire to feel alive. You get off on danger and take off on a kick-start when he looks the other way.

You know temptation and he is yours.

It's irony twisted tight, it's like you need him to keep you in check, like you need him to keep you from getting lost. (Like you can't wait for him to tighten that leash around your neck the same time you are fighting back, and then some more.)

You can't decide wrong from right, or so you keep convincing him with every line you cross.

You need him to make you stay if only to feel his fingers around your arms. Except you are the one to tighten your grip on him, forcing him to stay when he wants to go and it is only then that you finally admit to him.

"Stop running from me, Peter."

Like this is a plead he hasn't heard a thousand times before, like one he hasn't made of you. The two of you come together to form a paradox in motion, two contradictions that fit like puzzle pieces.

He doesn't reply, but he doesn't try to shrug you off once more. So you scowl, but it is with a kind of sadness you can't quite con him into seeing nothing at all. Still, you are tired of making off with his heart, tired of getting off on an unrequited love when he smiles at you like its okay to make a mistake even when you know he will be the first to go when you slip and fall.

(And there you go, smiling at him like he's the only one for you.)

He thinks there'll be another one for you. Another Kate, a better Alex, someone like Sara who sticks around (he has no idea he's it, he's the only other one for you.) It's in the balance, the tossing of rubber band balls back and forth. It's a catapulting promise he has to catch or else.

It's about admitting defeat, and finally taking what you want.

You turn his morals into dust when you drag your bare hands down the lapel of his bad suit, force him to feel the tracker around your ankle when you stretch your legs, remind him to say that you're his and no one else's.

"Don't steal my line, Neal."

It's no fingers through your hair or a subtle I love you too.

But you're Neal Caffrey, and you have always worked with less for more.

XXX Kuro