White Collar Fic - Bitter Hearts

[elrhiarhodan]

Title: Bitter Hearts
Author: elrhiarhodan
Fandom: White Collar
Rating: G
Characters/Pairings: Neal Caffrey, Mozzie, Neal & Mozzie friendship, reference to Neal/Kate
Word Count: ~1500
Spoilers: Forging Bonds, Dentist of Detroit
Warnings/Enticements/Triggers: None
Beta Credit: sinfulslasher
Summary: Set pre-series, over many glasses of boxed wine, Moz tells Neal why he doesn't like Valentine's Day.

Author’s Note: Written for Round One of chocolatebox, for veleda_k, who wanted a Neal & Mozzie friendship fic. Since I know her OTP is Neal/Kate, I gave her a little bit of that, too. It's Valentine's Day, after all!

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Neal was looking through the Valentine's Day gift catalog that had arrived in the mail. He had already ordered a dozen long-stemmed red roses for Kate. But he wanted to get her something else. Something special. It was too soon for jewelry. Maybe some hand-made chocolates and ...

"Don't tell me you subscribe to the notion that true love is measured by the size of the box of chocolates you give your beloved."

Neal spun around, surprised to see Mozzie at his shoulder. "Didn't hear you come in."

"Stealth is one of my many superpowers." Moz plucked the catalog out of his hand and tossed it into the trash. "You know Valentine's Day is just a greeting card holiday. Invented by some housewife to honor herself, or something like that."

Neal rocked back on his heels, surprised. Mozzie was rarely this far off the mark. "I think you're thinking of Mother's Day. St. Valentine's Day goes all the way back to the Middle Ages. Chaucer even wrote about it. You remember him, right? He's the guy who wrote The Canterbury Tales way back in the Fourteenth Century? That book you insisted I read in the original Middle English." Which had given Neal a week-long headache.

Moz sighed and gave him a dirty look. "Yeah, yeah – For this was on seynt Volantynys day / Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make – I know that. I just … don't like it. It's an organized conspiracy against those who prefer to live their lives alone. Do you know that the cost for dinner for a 'table for two' at even a moderately priced restaurant goes up by sixty percent on Valentine's Day?!?!"

Much like the pitch of your voice, thought Neal with a lack of charity as his friend continued to rant about the holiday and the commercialization of romantic love. "Why does it bother you so much? You usually let stuff like this roll over you like water off a duck's ass."

Moz shrugged and didn't answer. But there was something in his friend's expression, grief and shame and longing, that made Neal wonder and worry. "Hey, come on. You can tell me."

Moz pulled off his glasses and started wiping them frantically.

"Mozzie?"

"Okay, I'll tell. But I'm not doing this sober."

"Fine, fine." Neal pulled out a new box of Franzia.

Moz grimaced. "I'd prefer something a little less … industrial."

"This is all I've got." Neal put two relatively clean glasses on the table.

"Well, what it lacks in everything else, it makes up for in volume."

Neal poured two generous glasses of the so-called wine and waited for Moz to get lubricated.

"You're staring at me."

"I'm not staring, I'm gazing in your general direction."

"I feel like I'm a dog in a tutu about to jump through a hoop."

Neal tried not to get annoyed. "Where do you want me to look?"

"Just – just don't stare at me, okay?"

"Okay." Neal made it a point of looking at his nails, his shirt cuffs, the rest of the day's pile of junk mail, while he waited for Moz to start his story.

"I was nine."

Neal looked up. Moz was staring off into the distance, into the past.

"Third grade?"

"Yeah. Mrs. Jenkinson was the teacher. She was pretty and nice. She always picked me when I raised my hand."

Neal had a feeling he knew where this story was going. He'd seen that Charlie Brown special.

"It may surprise you to learn, but I wasn't a popular kid. I was too different, too … " Moz didn't finish the sentence.

"It must have been rough, being smarter than everyone else."

"Yeah. Hated all the other kids. They were slow and stupid." Moz finished the contents of his glass in a gulp and poured himself another. "I liked Mrs. Jenkinson, though." Moz got lost again in the memory.

Neal waited.

"You remember what grade school was like? Lots of pointless assignments, like making a map of the country out of macaroni, or endlessly reciting multiplication tables."

"Yeah – and long division. That was a killer."

Moz chuckled. "Fractions, too."

"What happened?"

"Winter's a rough time in Detroit." Moz spoke as if he were still living there. "Cold and dark and dangerous. But school – at least for third grade – was good. Until Valentine's Day. We had to make Valentines for our favorite people and then exchange them in front of everyone. An exercise in humiliation more profound than anything I've experienced since."

Neal wanted to give his friend a hug.

"I wasn't going to waste my time or talents on making a card for any of those stupid girls. They liked to gang up on me and push me in the mud and call me names. Felicity Carter would tell me that my parents took one look at me and immediately gave me away, I was so ugly."

Neal made a joke. "Felicity Carter … Is she on your enemies list?"

Apparently, Moz didn't think it was a joke. "Nah – she's been working in a convenience store at a truck stop in Idaho for the last twenty-two years. Think that's punishment enough."

He fell silent and Neal went back into waiting-for-Moz mode.

Eventually, Moz picked up the threads of his story. "I probably should have just not made any Valentine's cards. It wasn't as if I was going to get any, anyway." Moz stared into his wineglass, as if it held all the secrets of the universe. "But I was stupid. I was nine."

"You made a card for Mrs. Jenkinson?"

"Yeah. I got Mr. Jeffries to help, too. He found some old paper doilies and helped me make them into hearts. He also splurged on some red and silver glitter and a new bottle of Elmer's glue. I wrote 'Be My Valentine' on it and Mr. Jeffries traced out the letters with the glue and we poured glitter over it. It was perfect."

Neal smiled softly. "I'm sure it was."

"On Valentine's Day, we had to get up in front of the whole class and say who we were giving Valentine's cards to. I thought, maybe I'd just leave the card on Mrs. Jenkinson's desk during recess and then get a stomach ache. But best laid plans…"

"Often go awry."

"It was okay – Tommy Bullson peed his pants when he gave his cards out. Ricky Eames and Stevie Martin couldn't even read. The girls did okay – but you know how those things go – it's basically a popularity contest. And then came my turn. Of course, I hadn't gotten any Valentine's cards. Not that I wanted any.

"I gave my card to Mrs. Jenkinson and read a poem I wrote. She told me it was the best thing any student had ever done for her, and called me her Little Prince Charming. And then she kissed me. On my cheek, in front of everyone. She put the card on the bulletin board and it stayed there for the rest of the year.

"It was awful – everyday, for the rest of the year, all the kids called me 'Little Prince Charming'. I was … humiliated. Worse than ever. She might as well have embroidered 'kick me' on my jacket."

Neal had quite a few less-than-charitable thoughts about Mozzie's third grade teacher and her lack of sensitivity.

"I bet you got boatloads of Valentine's Day cards when you were in third grade." Moz gave him a sour look.

"Nope – not a one. I wasn't exactly the most popular kid, either. "

Moz made a rude noise. "Pull the other one."

"No – seriously. My mom couldn't hold a job, most of my clothes came from Goodwill, and I didn't exactly have a type of home life that parents wanted their own kids exposed to. I wasn't growing up in an orphanage, but my childhood wasn't all that much better than yours. You know that."

"Ah, yeah. Forgot about that."

Neal poured more of the boxed wine into his glass, then topped Mozzie's off. "It's hard putting your heart out there."

"So says the hopeless romantic. I've seen you on your lunch dates with Adler's pretty secretary."

"Her name is Kate."

"She looks like she's barely old enough to drive, let alone drink."

"She's old enough – and smart enough – to work for one of the most powerful men on Wall Street."

"That's true." Moz sipped his wine and grimaced. "You can't afford to get distracted, Neal. Kate may be pretty and smart, but you're there to do a job. Not fall in love."

Neal let Moz's advice wash over him like the tide. This was nothing he hadn't heard before. He was going to get them their millions. And he was going to have Kate, too. It might take some time, but he was patient when it came to the things that mattered.

Like love.


FIN