elrhiarhodan | White Collar Fic: A White Collar Fairy Tale: The Humble Woodsman and the Magical Tree

Title: A White Collar Fairy Tale: The Humble (but handsome) Woodsman and the Magical (but princely) Tree
Author:

elrhiarhodan
Fandom: White Collar
Pairing/Characters: Peter Burke, humble woodsman; Neal Caffrey, the lost prince; Vicenzo Adlerio, the King’s wicked vizer (Peter/Neal)
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: If you live in some alternate universe where this stuff airs on basic cable in Prime Time, it may spoil something in Forging Bonds
Word Count: ~1700
Warnings/Enticements/Triggers: Crack, crackity crack crack. Step on your mother’s back type crack.
Summary: Some of you may be old enough to remember the Fractured Fairy Tales segment from the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, so yeah…I went there.

A/N: This is all

rabidchild67’s fault (isn’t it always?) Last April, I played on the Alternative Universes I’ll Never Actually Write meme, and RC67 asked for White Collar, Grimm Bros’ fairytale style (first she had asked for Wagnerian Opera, but I threatened her with a knife). Well, even though I was not “supposed” to write it, I did. Sort of. Read at your own risk. Please send all complaints to

rabidchild67

Consider yourself warned.

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ONCE UPON A TIME (because all such stories begin that way), there was a humble, but very strong and very handsome woodsman named Peter, who lived in a cottage in the forest with his talented and beautiful wife, Elizabeth, and their great hound, Scratchmore (because he did...scratch more).

One day, Peter was out in the woods with his great big axe and his hound, he was marking his lord's trees for deadfall - to clear the old growth and make way for the new, he chanced upon a tree he had never seen before. This puzzled Peter, because he'd been living in the forest almost all his life (except when he was a woodsman school, where he learned how to wield his axe and speak French), he knew all of the trees quite well, almost intimately, you might say.

This strange new tree was young and slim and beautiful - it was clearly a prince of a tree, with plenty of foliage and smooth bark. Peter ran his hands up and down the trunk, gliding his fingertips along every bump and striation. Yes, this was a beautiful, elegant and lovely tree. But it was also a problem tree - it had sprouted in the middle of the forest path.

It saddened Peter than he'd have to cut it down. All such beautiful and young trees should be nurtured and protected. But it was growing out of the middle of the road, and if Peter didn't cut it down, it would get run over by wagons or hacked to bits by passing noblemen who would attach it with their swords.

So there was nothing he could do but give it a quick and honorable death, and then maybe use the wood for something wonderful, perhaps a few new dildos for his wife. Their girth would be large, but Elizabeth was such a reine de grandeur, and carving a new set for her would be a pleasant way to pass the cold winter months (because they couldn’t fuck all the time).

Scratchmore, being a dog without much discernment about the beauty of trees or dildo carving (but he knew a lot about sticks and rabbits and food and farting), lifted his leg and peed against this perfectly beautiful tree while Peter the Woodsman was honing his axe to cut it down.

“HEY!!!! STOP THAT!!!!”

The voice startled both man and dog. Scratchmore barked and Peter (the stalwart, handsome and strong woodsman) cut his thumb on the blade of his axe. It was deep and bled like a stuck pig. He stuck it in his mouth and sucked.

The dog barked again and sniffed the base of the tree.

“I said STOP THAT.”

Peter pulled his thumb out of his mouth with an audible pop. “What? Who spoke?”

“ ‘Tis me - the tree.”

That couldn’t be. “Trees don't speak” Peter felt foolish, talking to the air.

“I'm really not a tree, Sir Woodsman. And please keep your dog away from me. I am certain that his piss isn’t good for my bark or root system.”

Peter thumb was still bleeding and he stuck in back in his mouth (frankly, any excuse to suck on it was, well, not an opportunity to be missed) and shook his head, he couldn't believe that the tree was talking and that the tree was talking back to him.

Peter, the handsome woodsman with an oral fixation, reluctantly removed his digit from between his lips and asked, “If you're not a tree, then who or what are you?”

“I am Prince Neal - the King's son.”

Peter snorted. “Pull the other one. The King doesn't have a son.” Everyone knew that the King had never married. Even the lowliest of woodcutters.

The tree – or Prince Neal, if it was to be believed – had answer for that. “The King does not know about me yet - he married my mother and then abandoned her before she told him she was pregnant.

Peter was skeptical - this seemed like the stuff of fairy tales, or penny-dreadfuls. “Okay, say I believe that you are Prince Neal, the son and rightful heir to the throne of this fair kingdom, why are you now a tree?”

Neal, the tree, gave a weary sigh. “Vincenzo Adlerio, the King's Vizer, turned me into a tree. He was the one who convinced my father to abandon my mother, and now he wants the throne himself. He first tried to keep me from finding my father by corrupting my very young, very pretty girlfriend, who just happened to work for him in his palace offices. She had no real skills other than painting, but she certainly smiled with distinction.” There was a sad note in the tree’s voice. “She went away afterwards. I’ll never see her again. I think Adlerio turned her into a butterfly, or maybe a hummingbird. Something very pretty with wings.”

Peter the woodsman with a heart of gold and a very sharp axe was still skeptical. “Your story, tree-man, is very strange.”

“Adlerio confronted me yesterday on this very road, or maybe another day before that. We grappled, he tore my clothes off and cast a spell on me.”

“Why did he tear your clothes off – that was an odd thing to do.”

“I think he wanted to…” And there was a very pregnant pause, “violate me.”

Peter, being a handsome but humble woodsman, did not really know about court politics, but he knew gossip, and no one in the village spoke well of the King's Vizer. He had strange tastes. And not because he liked to screw men. That was not so strange. Peter liked to fuck men too. There were other things that they said about Adlerio, things that were spoken of in whispers, just in case someone was listening.

He popped his still-bleeding thumb back into his mouth, sucking at it idly. He didn't know what to do. He didn't quite believe that this tree was once a human, and that the human was the king's son. But this was a talking tree - a magic tree - and if he cut it down, he'd be killing something wonderful. And that was something he couldn’t bear.

“Do you know how deep your roots go, good Tree?”

The tree sighed. “Not very deep. I can feel the water running beneath me, but I can't reach it. I’m afraid I’ll die of thirst.”

Peter, the very intelligent and highly resourceful woodman had a solution. “I can move you. I can plant you beside my cottage door and water and feed you so you'll grow tall and straight and healthy.”

The tree shivered. “I don't want to stay a tree - I want to be human again. I want to meet my father, and I want fall in love with a princess and live happily ever after.”

Peter shook his hand, despite all the sucking, the cut was deep and it still stung. “I can't leave you here, and I don't know how to undo this magic.”

The tree – Neal – sighed. “Okay - you can transplant me, but be careful.”

Peter took off his woolen cloak and spread it out on the ground. He was going to need something to wrap the tree up.

“Oooh, you are so very noble.” There was just a bit of a smirk in the tree's voice and Peter smiled - this tree was funny and smart. He liked smart things.

He told Scratchmore to start digging, and the dog's big paws quickly loosened the dirt. Peter used his dagger to cut away some of the smaller roots, but was careful not to damage the main ones. He was impressed at the size of the roots for such a slim, young tree. But as careful as he was, his dagger slipped and scratched one of the big roots. Some clear fluid oozed out of the cut.

“Ouch - be gentle, okay?”

Peter apologized, but when he reached to take hold of the root, with the hand that he had cut, the cut that was still oozing blood, the evil magic that had turned the Prince into a tree unraveled in a burst of bright white light.

Peter fell back and Scratchmore barked and barked and out of the puff of smoke a beautiful naked young man appeared, lying in the hole that he had dug.

“What? How?” The young man was as dazed as the tall, handsome and rugged, woodsman helped him to his feet.

“Thank you, kind woodsman - you've saved me.” Neal - Prince Neal (for such a handsomely beautiful young man couldn't be anything EXCEPT a prince) - wrapped his arms around Peter and kissed his cheek.

Peter was flustered - he couldn't help but notice how naked Prince Neal was. He picked his woolen cloak up off of the ground and wrapped him in it. He also couldn't help but notice that the prince's manhood hand a small scratch on it - like a cut from a dagger.

Peter was going to take the prince home with him, have his beautiful wife, Elizabeth clean him up, make sure that cut didn't get infected, get him some clothing. But those plans fell into disarray when the King' Vizer, Adlerio appeared.

“Curses, curses - how did you get free?” He screamed his frustration and raised his wand.

Peter didn't stop to think. He picked up his axe and threw it at Alderio. It landed with a sickening thunk in the middle of his head, cleaving him in half. A nasty, sulfurous smoke rose out of the dead Vizer's body as it shriveled away to nothing.

Woodsman Peter and Prince Neal stood there.

“Wow - you killed him.” Neal stated the obvious.

Peter looked up from the twisted, rotten corpse. “Yeah - I did.”

“You're my hero.”

Peter smiled and reached for Prince Neal, dragging him close. “Still want that princess?”

Prince Neal licked his lips. “Maybe, maybe not.”

Peter kissed the young man who was just so recently a tree. There was lots of tongue and more than a little biting. Neal moaned and clung to Peter.

“And now?”

“Hmmm, I may need a few more samples.”

After burying the revolting corpse, Peter took Neal back to his little cottage in the middle of the woods where his wife bathed them both and tended to their cuts and their horny pricks and the three of them lived happily ever after.

THE END