White Collar; Fic; Wait: They Don't Love You Like I (The Maps Remix); R
Title: Wait: They Don't Love You Like I (The Maps Remix)
Author: gyzym (NB: This is a remix; original work by thosewerepearls.)
Rating: R
Pairings: Peter/El, Peter/Neal
Spoilers: Nope!
Warnings: Infidelity.
Author's Note: As mentioned above, this is a remix of thosewerepearls's incomparable story, You would wish long and long to be with him. Go read that first. It is INCREDIBLE, and she has my massive thanks for allowing me to do this. Also, the title is pulled from a Yeah Yeah Yeahs song.
Summary: El finds the napkin in his pocket.
El finds the napkin in his pocket.
It is Neal's handwriting, that characteristic artistic scrawl (Elizabeth knew it before she knew Neal, back when her husband brought the files home with him and left them papering every surface--the countertops, the coffee table). She traces the lines with her fingertips, the boot of Italy sliding off the edge and the faint traces of the British coasts; it's clearly part of a map, though she couldn't say of what. There are incomplete dates, nearly illegible, arrows pointing to nowhere. She feels like she's excavated the corner of some ancient document, some prized parchment rendering. She wonders idly if she should call 'round to the museums.
There are things she doesn't have to wonder, like why Peter saved the napkin, like why he pressed it into his inside suit pocket, close to his heart. She remembers, with the gentle ache of grief long since scabbed over, the days before Neal Caffrey; she remembers Peter's large, uncomplicated hands on her breasts, his eyes clear and with her.
He was always--well, he was always a little bit the job. Surveillance photos and unnecessary risks and long nights, leaving her curled up with a pillow and a bottle of table wine. She'd liked it, at first. She was an independent woman, Elizabeth, who'd suffered her whole life the curse of being beautiful and approachable at once. After a string of lovers who laughed too long and held too close, Peter's focused drudgery had been an escape. A relief.
And oh, when he was hers--when he looked at her like she lit up the room, like she was his home and his vacation and his fantasy at once--when he was hers she bloomed under his touch, let his gratitude for her fill her to choking. It held her steady, made bearable the nights with Satchmo and an old movie, the gunpowder she sometimes found on his sleeve. He came home once in only his hideous slacks and a blood-soaked t-shirt and wept in her arms; that was bearable too, albeit achingly so. She learned to love his desire to do right nearly as much as his desire to do wrong, to touch her again and again in the quiet of their bedroom, to whisper his name into her various crevices and make her his own.
The loss of him had been slow, inevitable. He'd come home with files in his hands and he'd shown her--the hotshot kid, the latest felon. She hadn't noticed until it was too late how much of himself he poured down into the chase, how inextricably he tangled himself. Then she'd woken one cold Thursday morning, shivering alone under the covers, Peter already holding up ties to their bedroom mirror.
"New information," he said, to her questioning look. He didn't have to tell her more than that; she pointed to the red tie, got up to knot it for him, and knew that now no one was saying "Neal Caffrey" without saying "Peter Burke." The signs had been easy to see, after that--her husband was not the kind of man to do things by halves. He lived and breathed Caffrey like he'd lived and breathed her, and she knew she'd made a mistake in letting him catch her. She knew she'd never keep him now.
Against a lesser opponent, she would have fought harder. Elizabeth was an intelligent woman (even brilliant, even exemplary--she was dismissive of praise out of courtesy, but she gathered it close to her, hoarded it); she knew when she was outclassed. Even before she met Caffrey, even before he'd waltzed into her living room like he owned the place, she'd studied his handwriting and known there was no beating him.
And now, now she has this napkin and Peter isn't home, isn't coming home--he'd have called by now, if he was coming. He'd have called and told her five minutes, ten, fifteen, the little lies that keep a marriage on its tracks. He'd have called and she'd have laughed, forgiven him, curled up with her pillow and her red wine and her dog and waited him out.
She always did make it too easy for him.
She looks at the clock--one, two. At three, she takes Neal's hastily scrawled example and begins to tear at it, quietly. It's a calm thing, methodical; the soft paper leaves soft, ragged edges where it has ripped. She rolls them between her fingers: the shreds of a Renaissance more or less unknown her, the here-there-be-dragons of her own fucking life, and she wishes she could map out the coming days on the clean white walls of her bedroom, on the hollowed-out space in her heart.
Author: gyzym (NB: This is a remix; original work by thosewerepearls.)
Rating: R
Pairings: Peter/El, Peter/Neal
Spoilers: Nope!
Warnings: Infidelity.
Author's Note: As mentioned above, this is a remix of thosewerepearls's incomparable story, You would wish long and long to be with him. Go read that first. It is INCREDIBLE, and she has my massive thanks for allowing me to do this. Also, the title is pulled from a Yeah Yeah Yeahs song.
Summary: El finds the napkin in his pocket.
El finds the napkin in his pocket.
It is Neal's handwriting, that characteristic artistic scrawl (Elizabeth knew it before she knew Neal, back when her husband brought the files home with him and left them papering every surface--the countertops, the coffee table). She traces the lines with her fingertips, the boot of Italy sliding off the edge and the faint traces of the British coasts; it's clearly part of a map, though she couldn't say of what. There are incomplete dates, nearly illegible, arrows pointing to nowhere. She feels like she's excavated the corner of some ancient document, some prized parchment rendering. She wonders idly if she should call 'round to the museums.
There are things she doesn't have to wonder, like why Peter saved the napkin, like why he pressed it into his inside suit pocket, close to his heart. She remembers, with the gentle ache of grief long since scabbed over, the days before Neal Caffrey; she remembers Peter's large, uncomplicated hands on her breasts, his eyes clear and with her.
He was always--well, he was always a little bit the job. Surveillance photos and unnecessary risks and long nights, leaving her curled up with a pillow and a bottle of table wine. She'd liked it, at first. She was an independent woman, Elizabeth, who'd suffered her whole life the curse of being beautiful and approachable at once. After a string of lovers who laughed too long and held too close, Peter's focused drudgery had been an escape. A relief.
And oh, when he was hers--when he looked at her like she lit up the room, like she was his home and his vacation and his fantasy at once--when he was hers she bloomed under his touch, let his gratitude for her fill her to choking. It held her steady, made bearable the nights with Satchmo and an old movie, the gunpowder she sometimes found on his sleeve. He came home once in only his hideous slacks and a blood-soaked t-shirt and wept in her arms; that was bearable too, albeit achingly so. She learned to love his desire to do right nearly as much as his desire to do wrong, to touch her again and again in the quiet of their bedroom, to whisper his name into her various crevices and make her his own.
The loss of him had been slow, inevitable. He'd come home with files in his hands and he'd shown her--the hotshot kid, the latest felon. She hadn't noticed until it was too late how much of himself he poured down into the chase, how inextricably he tangled himself. Then she'd woken one cold Thursday morning, shivering alone under the covers, Peter already holding up ties to their bedroom mirror.
"New information," he said, to her questioning look. He didn't have to tell her more than that; she pointed to the red tie, got up to knot it for him, and knew that now no one was saying "Neal Caffrey" without saying "Peter Burke." The signs had been easy to see, after that--her husband was not the kind of man to do things by halves. He lived and breathed Caffrey like he'd lived and breathed her, and she knew she'd made a mistake in letting him catch her. She knew she'd never keep him now.
Against a lesser opponent, she would have fought harder. Elizabeth was an intelligent woman (even brilliant, even exemplary--she was dismissive of praise out of courtesy, but she gathered it close to her, hoarded it); she knew when she was outclassed. Even before she met Caffrey, even before he'd waltzed into her living room like he owned the place, she'd studied his handwriting and known there was no beating him.
And now, now she has this napkin and Peter isn't home, isn't coming home--he'd have called by now, if he was coming. He'd have called and told her five minutes, ten, fifteen, the little lies that keep a marriage on its tracks. He'd have called and she'd have laughed, forgiven him, curled up with her pillow and her red wine and her dog and waited him out.
She always did make it too easy for him.
She looks at the clock--one, two. At three, she takes Neal's hastily scrawled example and begins to tear at it, quietly. It's a calm thing, methodical; the soft paper leaves soft, ragged edges where it has ripped. She rolls them between her fingers: the shreds of a Renaissance more or less unknown her, the here-there-be-dragons of her own fucking life, and she wishes she could map out the coming days on the clean white walls of her bedroom, on the hollowed-out space in her heart.