Smoke, White Collar, R
Aug. 17th, 2010 07:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
veronicasleepsTitle: Smoke
Prompt: #007 Background
Author: ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
veronicasleeps
Rating: R
Characters/Pairings: Neal/Peter
Word count: 300
Warnings/Spoilers: S01E14, S02E01 ; Substance Abuse.
Summary: Of paint and fire.
Notes: A continuation of #004 , Watching. I am not quite sure about where this is going, but Feedback is very much appreciated.
Written for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif){kind=small}
whitecollar100 .
The smoke is curling seductively in the room, engaging in an invisible dance with the paint thinner fumes. Heady, pressing against Neal’s brain, it feels unbearable and still, it’s sweet salvation at the same time.
Neal hasn’t done this in a while, the drugs, not since before prison at least, but he needs them today. He couldn’t do it without them, can’t face the truth, and can’t stand the change.
What Neal also needs is something physical, a representation of all this, something to look at, something to touch, and something to feel and to overwrite his memories of her. Memories of Kate, and of fire, memories that are swirling around and around and around like that fucking smoke; Neal hates those memories.
That’s why he is here. That’s why he’s flying high.
Neal looks at the Canvas in front of him, and stares at it, directly into Kate’s eyes. When he can’t stand it anymore, he raises the joint to his lips and inhales. Deeply. It burns down his throat in a sick imitation of what she must have felt, but reality, that hurts even worse. It’s not enough to erase the other pain. Phantom pain. Loss.
He dips a thick brush into the open pot of paint and covers Kate with a coat of white that drips down, like melting snow after a blazing fire.
It always comes back to fire, Neal thinks, and opens a bottle of harsh burning whiskey and drinks, not from a glass, but straight from the bottle as he watches paint dry.
Neal hides Kate under a painting of need and want, of Peter and Elizabeth and Love, and closes his eyes. In still wet places on the canvas his past and future mingle together. Like smoke, no, like metal, soldered by flame.
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