Title: For years I told this story all wrong
Fandom: White Collar/Chuck
Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Betsy Sholl
Warnings: spoilers for Chuck season 2
Pairings: one-sided Bryce/Chuck, pre-Peter/Bryce!Neal
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 250
Point of view: third
Prompt: Chuck/White Collar, Bryce!Neal, he'd really only ever had one best friend
It shocked everyone back home when that pretty little trailer slut made it into Stanford. His grades were subpar, except for math, but he tested exceptionally well. And if a few changes were made to various records, no one really needed to know, right?
Bryce Larkin changed everything about himself when he went to Stanford, including his name. Bryce Larkin didn't exist before Stanford, and he wouldn't exist after. And he really only regretted one thing about the whole CIA/Fulcrum/ Ring business, and that was leaving Chuck behind.
Chuck liked Bryce for his geekiness and his smarts and the self-defense lessons that Chuck never mastered at all and that Bryce taught himself Klingon simply because Chuck wanted a thing just for them.
And then Bryce stabbed Chuck in the back, for his own good, though Chuck didn't know it at the time.
But Stanford is gone, and Bryce Larkin is dead, and Neal Caffrey only served a year of his time, though records will say otherwise. Maintaining two lives parallel to each other is supremely difficult, and without Kate's help he couldn't have done it. He really did love her, but he also used to wish, while holding her or kissing her or planning with her, that she was taller and stronger and spoke Klingon.
And now that he's Neal Caffrey full time—unless told otherwise by the FBI—he has Peter. And he could come to love Peter, given time.
But Peter will never be Chuck.