Title: sketching and hoping and wanting
Disclaimer: Neal and Mozzie aren't mine
Warnings: sexual and child abuse
Pairings: OMC/Neal
Rating: PG13
Wordcount: 295
Point of view: third
Prompt: Neal, how did he discover his talent for forgery?
In school, his favorite class was always art, followed closely by history. He didn't care about wars or inventions, unless they changed the culture of the time's art. He'd spend all day in the library, flipping through book after book of long-dead artists, captured and caught on their canvas.
He wanted to leave his mark on the world like that, to have people studying his paintings forever.
So he practiced, memorizing his favorites and recreating them flawlessly. It was his escape from his parents and bullies and never being good enough anywhere else, because he could draw.
But when he tried to create an original piece, his imagination failed. His fingers couldn't craft on the page the beauty he saw in his mind.
For three months of his junior year, he didn't draw at all. His dreams moved further out of reach, and he stopped flipping through art history books.
And then one of his father's cousins turned up out of the blue to talk to his father, and slept in his room, and found one of his sketchbooks (the Monet one).
"You got talent, kid," his father's cousin said, hand warm and bruising on his thigh. "Remind me to talk to your dad when we're finished here."
He didn't graduate high-school because he was finally learning a trade, something he excelled at, and he nearly forgot in all the excitement and terror that he could only copy someone else's masterpiece instead of crafting his own.
(When Mozzie saved him from two-bit grifting and hooking for his father's cousin, he told Neal that one day, he would find his inspiration and paint something of his own, something original and beautiful.
He wants to believe Moz, but in fifteen years, it hasn't happened yet.)