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Fic: Not This Time
Title: Not This Time
Characters (Pairings): Neal Caffrey
Rating: PG
Word Count: 350
Disclaimer: White Collar is Jeff Eastin's brainchild. Not mine.
Summary: The only real thing wrong with Neal is that he's young. And that's something time can always cure. Will he let it?
Author's Note: The summary is a modified version of this prompt from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
comment_fic (which ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tigriswolf, the prompter, mentioned is from Jack Schaffer's 'Shane'). I thought of the title because of a lyric from Christina Perri's Butterfly, and then immediately heard Taylor Swift singing "Not this time" (from I Know Places). Music. *sigh*. This is for Challenge 16a at writerverse. I see this as set in S2, after Countermeasures, but you can read it however you like :)
Neal's been in a dance with time ever since he ran away from home. All the hurt, all the knowledge, all the inevitable by-products of accumulating days and months and years keep pulling him down, trying to make him older, wiser, more cynical, less naive, everything he doesn't want to be.
He wants to keep believing that there's always a way out. And if he grows up, he's terribly afraid that he'll suddenly decide that the risks aren't worth it and decide to stay trapped instead of leaving when he can.
He's weathered all the rocks he's been thrown up against, made an art of molding himself around jagged edges, pretended he was bruised when he was only bent, gave just a little, then snatched it all back.
But then time deposited him at Peter's side. Which may just be the most cruel tactic of all.
And now he doesn't know whether to give in or keep resisting, because when Peter says things like "Grow up," with the softest possible look in his warm brown eyes, he wants to. Peter's words work better than all the battering that time could inflict.
Or they would if he let them.
He's been letting them go with an almost aggressive passion, nodding along to words he's already forgotten, tossed them into the wind, easy as ever. Cynicism isn't a look that suits him. And he doesn't know who he'd be if he didn't believe that there was always a way out. Not himself, surely.
But it isn't easy to let Peter's words go when he cares so damn much. He cares about what Peter thinks in a way that's completely unfamiliar to him.
Time has started fighting dirty.
If he closes his eyes, he thinks he can feel himself being pulled away from the six year old child's mentality that he's worked so hard to hold on to. Worse still, he doesn't mind too much.
He's not going to topple over that easily. He knows how time works, he knows how to fight it.
But what happens when he wants to give in?
Characters (Pairings): Neal Caffrey
Rating: PG
Word Count: 350
Disclaimer: White Collar is Jeff Eastin's brainchild. Not mine.
Summary: The only real thing wrong with Neal is that he's young. And that's something time can always cure. Will he let it?
Author's Note: The summary is a modified version of this prompt from
comment_fic (which tigriswolf, the prompter, mentioned is from Jack Schaffer's 'Shane'). I thought of the title because of a lyric from Christina Perri's Butterfly, and then immediately heard Taylor Swift singing "Not this time" (from I Know Places). Music. *sigh*. This is for Challenge 16a at writerverse. I see this as set in S2, after Countermeasures, but you can read it however you like :)Neal's been in a dance with time ever since he ran away from home. All the hurt, all the knowledge, all the inevitable by-products of accumulating days and months and years keep pulling him down, trying to make him older, wiser, more cynical, less naive, everything he doesn't want to be.
He wants to keep believing that there's always a way out. And if he grows up, he's terribly afraid that he'll suddenly decide that the risks aren't worth it and decide to stay trapped instead of leaving when he can.
He's weathered all the rocks he's been thrown up against, made an art of molding himself around jagged edges, pretended he was bruised when he was only bent, gave just a little, then snatched it all back.
But then time deposited him at Peter's side. Which may just be the most cruel tactic of all.
And now he doesn't know whether to give in or keep resisting, because when Peter says things like "Grow up," with the softest possible look in his warm brown eyes, he wants to. Peter's words work better than all the battering that time could inflict.
Or they would if he let them.
He's been letting them go with an almost aggressive passion, nodding along to words he's already forgotten, tossed them into the wind, easy as ever. Cynicism isn't a look that suits him. And he doesn't know who he'd be if he didn't believe that there was always a way out. Not himself, surely.
But it isn't easy to let Peter's words go when he cares so damn much. He cares about what Peter thinks in a way that's completely unfamiliar to him.
Time has started fighting dirty.
If he closes his eyes, he thinks he can feel himself being pulled away from the six year old child's mentality that he's worked so hard to hold on to. Worse still, he doesn't mind too much.
He's not going to topple over that easily. He knows how time works, he knows how to fight it.
But what happens when he wants to give in?
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If you're interested, I snagged the prompt from Jack Schaffer's Shane. In it, Shane says that about a young cowboy trying to be tough.
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It's my all-time favorite book.
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Poor Neal... I feel the same dilemma about him. I want him to stay Neal, but I also want him to do what's right. And what happens when he settles down?
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He needs to find a degree of maturity that he's suitably happy with, I guess. He can't fight forever :(
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I don't think it's that he has to so much as he's familiar with it, and he doesn't know how to be himself and be a little older. And yes, Peter's definitely helped :D
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Excellent written, love how you captured his train of thoughts. And you managed to let it shine through that Mozzie has made quite an impression on him, even though he tries not to be as cynical as his friend. Thanks for sharing!
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Thank you so much!!
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Thank you!
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Thank you for sharing ♥
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