One More Lonely Night, a White Collar fanfiction
Title: One More Lonely Night
Characters (Pairings): Sara Ellis (references to past Sara/Neal)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 747 (heh.)
Spoilers: For 4x16, sort of, indirectly.
Disclaimer: White Collar is Jeff Eastin’s brainchild. Not mine.
Summary: It's midnight. Sara's alone in her new apartment in London.
Author’s Note: I'm not crossposting because it feels OOC to me and I have committed every run on sentence crime possible in this, and I've repeated the same thing so often that I don't even. But whatever.
Title's an altered lyric from The Lonely by Christina Perri
For Challenge #21 - Weekly Quick Fic #8 - at
writerverse.
Part of the Amis Amants 'verse. For more in this verse, click here.
It's funny how often she ends up like this, lying on the floor of her apartment, takeout containers scattered next to her, pleasantly buzzed from the wine. This should be a happy scene, a London girl, merrily buzzed, staying up late for the hell of it, but the truth is, she can't sleep, but the truth is, she's not merry or pleasant, but the truth is, this apartment's too damn empty.
She's stuffed the place full of furniture and trinkets and whatever else people stuff their houses with, so much so that there's barely any space for her to lie on the floor, and somehow, the place is still too damn empty.
It's not fair.
And the worst part is, it's nothing she can figure out how to fix. It's not New York she's missing, it's not work she needs, she isn't even craving a freaking onion bagel. She's just indefinably exhausted.
And of all things, a passing car that's blaring some hideous mixture of sounds that people call pop is what reminds her that she needs more happy in her life. Without it, she may have just continued into this pattern of lonely late nights without even noticing. How does that happen?
She needs music. Music will fix this. It's probably some combination of the exhaustion and the alcohol talking, but in this split second, she's absolutely, utterly convinced that what she needs in her life is music.
She hauls her miserable ass off the floor and staggers around like she's under the influence of far more alcohol than she consumed before realizing that if she wants music, she should probably find some kind of music player. It's only logical.
She doesn't have a music player. Or a DVD player that can play CDs. Or an iPod. Or a freaking record player.
She has to buy one of those. Eventually. She's surprised she doesn't have one, to be honest, in this jumble of things she's stuffed the apartment with, there should be something that can play music, but there isn't.
But there is. She has her phone, and a connection to the internet. And there exist online streaming sites that are pretty much designed to provide people with music.
This is why she gets paid the big bucks, she muses as she hunts down her phone.
She opens the browser and then stops. She doesn't know what song she wants. And there's an easy way around that, most sites promote songs on their home pages, but she doesn't want to click on something just to find a sound she hates.
It's sort of sad, she muses, that she can't even think of a song she might like.
Maybe she's pushing herself too hard. She wants to, needs to, like London, because otherwise that means she made the wrong decision, which is so beyond okay it's in the exosphere.
She needs to know that she's right about herself, at the very least. She needs to know that she wants this, that she's really enjoying her work here, that she knows herself as well as she thought she did.
But it's after midnight, and she's worn out, and this apartment is too goddamned empty for its own good.
She doesn't want Neal. She wants the idea of him, she wants someone to fill up the space and make her feel warm and make the house not feel like so much space.
At least she knows that much about herself.
She does not want to be familiar with her brain when it's in this state. She hunts down some song or other and lets it fill up the silence and the dark.
She's never going to listen to this song again. It's too sad (which is ironic, it's a happy song with drums and guitars and everything), and it'll remind her of this, and she never wants to remember this miserable moment.. But right then, it's filling up the space and making her want to dance in the middle of the room and for now, that's what she needs.
And tomorrow, she's going to gripe at everything that pisses her off and smile at everything that doesn't and maybe that'll be better than pretending that she loves everything around her.
If the griping to smiling ratio is too out of balance, though, she might have to try something else. But maybe it won't be.
She clings to that thought and sways by herself in the middle of the room.
Characters (Pairings): Sara Ellis (references to past Sara/Neal)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 747 (heh.)
Spoilers: For 4x16, sort of, indirectly.
Disclaimer: White Collar is Jeff Eastin’s brainchild. Not mine.
Summary: It's midnight. Sara's alone in her new apartment in London.
Author’s Note: I'm not crossposting because it feels OOC to me and I have committed every run on sentence crime possible in this, and I've repeated the same thing so often that I don't even. But whatever.
Title's an altered lyric from The Lonely by Christina Perri
For Challenge #21 - Weekly Quick Fic #8 - at
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
Part of the Amis Amants 'verse. For more in this verse, click here.
It's funny how often she ends up like this, lying on the floor of her apartment, takeout containers scattered next to her, pleasantly buzzed from the wine. This should be a happy scene, a London girl, merrily buzzed, staying up late for the hell of it, but the truth is, she can't sleep, but the truth is, she's not merry or pleasant, but the truth is, this apartment's too damn empty.
She's stuffed the place full of furniture and trinkets and whatever else people stuff their houses with, so much so that there's barely any space for her to lie on the floor, and somehow, the place is still too damn empty.
It's not fair.
And the worst part is, it's nothing she can figure out how to fix. It's not New York she's missing, it's not work she needs, she isn't even craving a freaking onion bagel. She's just indefinably exhausted.
And of all things, a passing car that's blaring some hideous mixture of sounds that people call pop is what reminds her that she needs more happy in her life. Without it, she may have just continued into this pattern of lonely late nights without even noticing. How does that happen?
She needs music. Music will fix this. It's probably some combination of the exhaustion and the alcohol talking, but in this split second, she's absolutely, utterly convinced that what she needs in her life is music.
She hauls her miserable ass off the floor and staggers around like she's under the influence of far more alcohol than she consumed before realizing that if she wants music, she should probably find some kind of music player. It's only logical.
She doesn't have a music player. Or a DVD player that can play CDs. Or an iPod. Or a freaking record player.
She has to buy one of those. Eventually. She's surprised she doesn't have one, to be honest, in this jumble of things she's stuffed the apartment with, there should be something that can play music, but there isn't.
But there is. She has her phone, and a connection to the internet. And there exist online streaming sites that are pretty much designed to provide people with music.
This is why she gets paid the big bucks, she muses as she hunts down her phone.
She opens the browser and then stops. She doesn't know what song she wants. And there's an easy way around that, most sites promote songs on their home pages, but she doesn't want to click on something just to find a sound she hates.
It's sort of sad, she muses, that she can't even think of a song she might like.
Maybe she's pushing herself too hard. She wants to, needs to, like London, because otherwise that means she made the wrong decision, which is so beyond okay it's in the exosphere.
She needs to know that she's right about herself, at the very least. She needs to know that she wants this, that she's really enjoying her work here, that she knows herself as well as she thought she did.
But it's after midnight, and she's worn out, and this apartment is too goddamned empty for its own good.
She doesn't want Neal. She wants the idea of him, she wants someone to fill up the space and make her feel warm and make the house not feel like so much space.
At least she knows that much about herself.
She does not want to be familiar with her brain when it's in this state. She hunts down some song or other and lets it fill up the silence and the dark.
She's never going to listen to this song again. It's too sad (which is ironic, it's a happy song with drums and guitars and everything), and it'll remind her of this, and she never wants to remember this miserable moment.. But right then, it's filling up the space and making her want to dance in the middle of the room and for now, that's what she needs.
And tomorrow, she's going to gripe at everything that pisses her off and smile at everything that doesn't and maybe that'll be better than pretending that she loves everything around her.
If the griping to smiling ratio is too out of balance, though, she might have to try something else. But maybe it won't be.
She clings to that thought and sways by herself in the middle of the room.