elrhiarhodan

Title: The Wonder(ful) Years
Author:

elrhiarhodan
Fandom: White Collar
Rating: G - NC17
Characters/Pairings: Neal Caffrey, Peter Burke, White Collar stunt casting throughout (non-canon uses of canon characters)
Spoilers: None
Warnings/Enticements/Triggers: Bullying, verbal abuse of a child, threat of sexual abuse of a preteen child, parental abandonment, blackmail, extortion, consensual sex between older teenagers.
Word Count: ~28,000
Summary: School Years A/U centering on the friendship between Peter Burke and Neal Caffrey, from the time they are in kindergarten through their senior year in high school. For the purposes of this story, all of the characters are roughly the same age (Peter is a year older than Neal). The setting is middle class suburban New York (Westchester County), circa 1970–1983.

A/N: Written for

rabidchild67’s KidFic Fest on the

whitecollarhc comm.

Beta credit:

coffeethyme4me - words cannot express how much I owe, this story owes, to this fabulous woman. Very simply, it wouldn’t have been written without her sage advice, unstinting support and endless bounty of affection. All mistakes are mine and mine alone.

__________________

I should know better than to do Five Times fics. The beauty of writing a five times type story is that you can plan short vignettes that build to a respectable whole. When I planned this, it was going to be Four Times Peter Rescued Neal and One Time Neal Rescued Peter. It still is, except that the fifth chapter got a little complex, and ended up at almost 15k. I do hope you enjoy the story and each chapter - it has been a pleasure to write and I think that the only reason I ended it was because it was due TODAY!

Chapter 1 - At the Playground
Chapter 2 - Dodge Ball
Chapter 3 - Little League (Warning: Childhood abandonment issues, threatened sexual abuse of a pre-teen)
Chapter 4 - Rubick's Cube
Chapter 5 - Part 1 - Under the Bleachers
Chapter 5 - Part 2 - Under the Bleachers (Content Notice: Consensual sexual relations between teenagers)
Epilogue - At the Playground

Regarding the title, there is a terrific and very lighthearted White Collar HS A/U called The Wondersmith Years, by Msrvc, which I discovered when I was collecting stories for the White Collar Fixation Fan Fic Fest. I had tried to change the title of my own fic, but there was nothing else I could come up with that was quite as suitable.