comment_fic 291-295: White Collar, Supernatural, Star Trek reboot

[tigriswolf]

Title: sketching and hoping and wanting
Fandom: White Collar
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.)




 

Title: if only
Fandom: White Collar
Disclaimer: not my characters
Warnings: preseries
Pairings: none
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 200
Point of view: third
Prompt: Neal, how did he discover his talent for forgery?

In highschool, Neal took art every year. He practically lived in the public library, breathing in the books that showed long-dead artists and their masterpieces. He copied his favorites into dozens of sketchbooks, working up to crafting something beautiful and unique and his own. Something so wonderful he'd be famous and rich and remembered forever, and one day, students would study him.

And when he finally thought he was ready, he sat down in the library, pencil in hand. He had an idea: he could see it in his mind, a black and white portrait of his grandmother, something to make Mom smile when she cried at night because Gran died seven months ago.

But though he could paint flawless recreations of the paintings in books, his fingers couldn't sketch out what he wanted them to, what he saw in his imagination.

Mom died halfway through his senior year. Even though he wasn't eighteen, he left town, searching for something. He'd know it when he found it.

(When Mozzie came across the kid hitching his way to New York, he offered him a ride. And when he realized that the kid could draw, he offered him a job.)

 

Title: victory spoils the game
Fandom: Supernatural
Disclaimer: not my characters
Warnings: AU
Pairings: none
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 50ish
Point of view: third
Prompt: Sam and Dean, Sam wasn't killed in AHBL


Dean saw the guy behind Sam, saw the knife and the intent on his face, and even as he opened his mouth, he knew it was too late, that Sam--

And Sam dodged, grabbing the guy's arm as he lunged, twisting it so that he stabbed himself in the heart.

And when the demon visited his dreams that night, temptation pouring from his lips, Sam said no.

 

 

Title: or the one
Fandom: Star Trek reboot
Disclaimer: not my characters
Warnings: somewhat sad; spoilers for TOS movies
Pairings: none stated
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 265
Point of view: third
Prompt: Kirk & or /Spock, Jim tried to resist it, but he became just like his father anyway

 

Bones is going to kill him, and Spock will give him that look and say something about logic and pride, and Jim's got memories of a life he never lived where he was an old man, and buried his father in Iowa and his mother baked cookies. It was a good life. Nothing was exciting about it until he was old enough to not be stupid.

This isn't that life, and he's not that man, and he never met his father, and his mother baked cookies, once. They burned.

Bones is going to kill him for doing this, except—well. Jim would need to be alive for Bones to kill him, and Jim can imagine that look of Spock's, because he'll never see it again.

In that other life, his father was proud of him. Mom, too. People have spent this whole life telling him to not let his father down, to be the man his father would've wanted, to stop wasting time and do something.

And now... youngest captain in Starfleet history. Saved Earth and possibly the Federation.

Jim's got memories of a life he never lived and people he's never met and places he's never been to and things he's never done. And he knows that Spock killed himself to save them all, once, and he knows that Bones has always done his best to keep Jim from doing something stupid, and this… yeah. Bones would think this is stupid.

But Jim knows that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.

His father taught him that.

Title: the family business
Fandom: White Collar
Disclaimer: Neal's not mine
Warnings: preseries
Pairings: none
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 200
Point of view: third
Prompt: Neal/author's choice, theft is a family tradition - Neal just raised it to an art form

In Neal's earliest memories, he calls himself by a dozen names. His father was a petty thief and his mother a grifter without much talent, and they traveled along the West Coast, conning and stealing and running.

At the time, he thought it a marvelous adventure. His father taught him to paint and his mother taught him to lie; he learned all the tricks of their trades, and his father's friend taught him to use a knife and a gun and his fists as weapons—just in case, kiddo, there are dangerous folk in this world.

His parents were small-time criminals, so the law never really went after them. They died when he was fifteen, a car accident. His father's friend took him in, and it was there that the boy who would one day be Neal Caffrey honed his talents.

He keeps with the family tradition, but he goes so much further, dreams so much bigger, and he catches the eye of the law.

His father taught him to paint and his mother taught him to lie, and he combines the two into an art form that few—if any—will ever surpass.

After all, his mother promised him the stars.

Comments

White Collar snippet

[afiawri.livejournal.com]

Being a lover of pretty names, I don't usually like the idea that Neal wasn't always Neal (though I'll admit there's a high, high probability that I'm against future canon in this regard) but this fic made me want it to be true. It was beautiful and fit so well with Neal's canon personality. Also- wonderful pacing.

Re: White Collar snippet

[tigriswolf]

Thank you so much!