Because I only watched up to S2 of Chuck, the rest of the series didn't happen. (So no, Bryce doesn't die, I don't care what you say.) Also, this is my first time writing Chuck (as in the character) so I am just a little unsure of how in character he is. :S
XXX
before my human Intersect brain (i was smart)
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When Bryce dies the first time, Chuck doesn't mourn.
(Under any other circumstances he would. Probably.
But then again, the night before he did open an email that knocked him out. So, in any other circumstances, he wouldn't have a computer in his head. But he did. It also didn't look like he could take it out without damaging quite a few things along the way.
And Chuck was done with being damaged quite so thoroughly.
So yeah, no thanks.)
The second time, Chuck doesn't quite know what to think.
Oh, of course, there is that gripping fear at the sight of red and all that white in the Intersect room. There is also a stream of no-no-no-this-can't-be-happening that he isn't quite sure whether they are a mantra in his head or free flowing from between his lips. Not that it matters all that much when he is freaking the hell out and why is Sarah and Casey still not here yet?
And oh god, Bryce's blood is everywhere.
Chuck can't look away, not from the red or the blue of those eyes.
In retrospection, that's his second clue: the fact that Bryce's eyes are wide open. (Because the first clue has always been a fact, that Bryce Larkin may be good at a lot of things but staying dead is most likely not one of them.)
But with the Intersect flashing as it reactivates, the way the room is surrounded by images old and new and the fact that he just learns that he knows kung-fu, everything sort of fades into the back.
So naturally, when Bryce comes back, Chuck really shouldn't be surprised.
(He still is.)
000
Bryce prides himself on quite a few things.
For example, he is good at many things. He won't list them, because then he'll only sound like he's gloating when really, he is just stating a fact he's always known. But he is only best at two.
The first is being a superspy.
The second is dying (and oh, he dies a very convincing death every time).
But like Chuck figures, he is still working on the part where he stays dead. And at the mention of that particular man, Bryce wonders, not always just sometimes, how it would've all worked out if it weren't for, well, everything else.
Sometimes he will find himself too sentimental. Because isn't a spy supposed to be too busy shooting people point blank and running around saving the world without anyone knowing to think about the sacrifices that actually mean a whole lot more than he ever wants them to?
Not that he doesn't do that, because he does, on most days.
On days where he is ready to rise from the dead though? He is pretty sure he is allowed to wallow around in mistakes and regrets and choices made at twenty. While Bryce doesn't have melancholy in his soul, there is something profoundly sad about the way that everything he has worked for has finally found a way to unravel at his feet.
Bryce Larkin sucks in a breath, opens his eyes, and tries to convince himself that it isn't Chuck staring back at him.
"Damnit."
It works up until the part where he hears his name in Chuck's voice.
"Bryce, stop pretending you're dead."
He feels a soft thump of knuckles against his jaw and has to bite back a groan at the reality that he isn't as dead as he'd like to be and that the man by his bed is not conjured up by a drug-induced fascination to torture him some more.
He opens his eyes and nothing's changed.
Bryce wants to say that this sucks, the part where he is supposed to stay dead so his sacrifices look more like sacrifices than poorly planned attempts at salvaging a situation way out of his control. Except, it's just a little hard to say that it sucks to be alive when he can wake up to Chuck.
"Hey Chuck, missed me?"
"Hey yourself, you jerk."
Bryce will claim he isn't always this lame in his comebacks but Chuck is always capable of bringing out a side of him he can hardly even remember. It's been a long time since Stanford, it's been even longer since Chuck.
Bryce can't help but grin and it is a special kind of muscle reflex when he turns his head into Chuck's hand.
000
It gets easier, kind of.
At least, Bryce isn't a shivering hot mess smelling of cough syrup downed straight from the bottle and too many days spent under the blankets, also known as the state he finds Bryce Larkin in when he comes back to his Stanford dorm room after a two weeks winter holiday with Ellie and Awesome and Morgan.
He remembers freaking out for the first five minutes. And then spending the next three days before their second term starts holding Bryce's orange juice as he sips from the straw, and prying Bryce's mouth open at god-awful hours to make sure he takes his medicine at the correct four-hours intervals.
"So who knows?"
Bryce can get out of bed. It's been three days, give or take a couple hours here and there, since he's waked up. Despite Chuck's protests, he is walking around pushing through the slight sting and pull on the wound.
"You mean Bryce Larkin being alive or that Bryce Larkin died again?" Chuck asks, looking up from the movie magazine he is flipping through to watch Bryce drag along his IV drip.
"Alive?"
He keeps the magazine open on his lap and tries to count, the people who visited (when Bryce is still out and only barely breathing) and the ones who never came at all. "Uh, well, there's Sarah, Casey, so the Agencies I'm presuming. Ellie got me this room, so Captain Awesome knows too. Morgan probably figured it out with all the time I'm missing from the house and the Buymore. My dad, of course. And me."
"…Who knows I'm an Intersect?"
"Just me."
Chuck picks at the corner of a page.
"Okay."
Bryce makes his way back to the bed, his breathing still too harsh, his pulse beating just a bit too fast for his liking. But it's hard too because well, there's everything else just beyond this hospital room and the three days that no one's come by, that no one's left. He doesn't get on the bed until Chuck stands up and steadies him by the arm.
There are things they say and then there are things they don't know how to say.
Like stay.
Or maybe even, let's go.
000
He flashes.
Faking as the human Intersect for Fulcrum doesn't even make up for a fraction of what he just experienced. While some of the things he sees doesn't compare to some of the things he's done, he blinks, voice catching in his throat at the smiling nurse. His eyes follow the tray of medical equipment on her trolley before she passes by their door.
His hand grips Chuck's, a little too tight.
"You too?"
Bryce nods, eyes still blinking slow, new to the onslaught of violence in splashes of images merging into one entire scenario. He tries to pull his hand back, a silent sorry for the death grip that Chuck doesn't quite let him get away with.
"How long do you think until she's back with an army of superspies?"
"Tonight at the latest. I don't think they expect me to stay in a hospital like this."
Chuck grins and lets go of Bryce's hand to stand.
"Smart thinking of me, wasn't it?"
"Very."
Bryce rolls his eyes in reply but it's just so much harder to bite down on the smile threatening to spill over when Chuck is looking at him like that.
It takes a second, but then he slowly peels back the tape keeping the IV drips in, slower still as he extracts the needle from the crook of his right arm. And it's a well learned mechanical procedure he knows by heart as he strips out of the thin hospital clothes Chuck makes him wear for the ones Chuck is already taking out from the small duffel bag.
He puts them on the bed and grabs the half emptied bottles of pills on the bedside table. "I'm going to go pick up some meds for you."
"Hey Chuck," Bryce offers a small smile, heart in his throat at the settling realization that he has to run again. "Do you think you can thank Ellie for me? You know, thank her for not pulling the plug on me?"
"Sure thing." Chuck grins by the door.
Bryce feels his heart a few sizes too big for his chest. He turns around, feigning nonchalance as he picks up the shirt from the bed. It's sizes too big. He blinks and there are no Intersect flashes.
"Hey Bryce," he stills at Chuck's voice by the door with Chuck's shirt in his hands, helpless at what he needs to do because— "Do you think you can stay until I get back? I'm getting you the good drugs. I want to tell Ellie goodbye. So you know… don't run off by yourself again."
Bryce is quick, but sometimes, Chuck is faster by just that little bit.
So by the time Bryce turns around, Chuck is gone.
000
It's been five days.
And Chuck is a corner away from Ellie's station when he nearly runs into Sarah. He is slightly proud that he doesn't drop all the bottles to the ground before he remembers.
"Sarah, there's this nurse—"
"Is he still going to be there when you get back?"
"…I am asking myself the same question right now. I hope the answer is yes but that's Bryce we're talking about, he likes to play hero so it might be a no." Chuck is making one of his wild gesture when he suddenly freezes up, eyes wide. "Oh my god, are you going to take us back? Because, well, I mean I can't really stop you even with my mad ninja skills, especially with Bryce still out of commission. But—"
There is a resignation he doesn't remember from five days before and her smile is so sad, Chuck forgets what he was saying.
"Chuck, the Agency doesn't care if a dead agent is gone. They care when their only Intersect disappears along with him."
"Wait, so—"
"And you're a terrible liar." She pulls him down into her arms, presses her cheek against his ear and murmurs with a soft shake of her head, one that he can't see but can feel through his bones. "Like you said, the Intersect was destroyed. And Casey's training kicked in right on time, I think I should ask him for a few lessons in kung-fu too."
In the past, she might need to give him a push.
"Go."
In the present, he is already running the moment she lets go.
000
He finds him right where he leaves him. And it makes him ridiculously happy.
"You took a while."
Bryce glances up from the movie magazine with a raised brow, like his hands don't know how to tremble. Except they do, and his body knows a million other things his mouth doesn't know how to say (like telling Chuck to stay, in Burbank or with him is a whole other question he knows he can't get out).
"She wanted to give me extra, just in case. She also said you're welcome, she was tempted though." He holds up the brown paper bag and it rattles as he drops it in the duffel bag.
"And, you know Ellie likes her hugs." Chuck shrugs as he zips the bag close, and there is a short second where he contemplates whether what he is about to do is a good idea at all. But then he has been contemplating everything about Bryce for so long, he doesn't really want to think anymore.
"This one is from her."
Chuck wraps his arms around him and pulls him close, feels the soft cotton of his own t-shirt on the other man. And when he breathes in, nose buried in the crook of his neck, careful to avoid the bandages around Bryce's torso, he smells like antiseptic and medicine.
Just enough to remind him of sophomore year and tilting Bryce's mouth open to get him to take his pills in the dark. He remembers his hot clammy skin beneath his hands, half-dazed smiles in the night, a mangled hoarse thank you, and a press of Bryce's lips over his for a fraction of a second when his fever finally breaks three days later.
Chuck also remembers being in love for a really long time.
"And this one is from me."
He catches his lips, eyes opened.
Scared that when he closes his eyes, there'll be flashes (or worse yet, Bryce's blood on his hands once more). He feels Bryce smiling against his lips, pressing forward with a telling glint before he is sliding his blue eyes shut, falling back on sense memories of a first kiss that should've last forever.
"We should go before the creepy nurse comes back."
When they break apart, Chuck finds Bryce's hand. The other picks up the duffel bag from the bed and they don't turn back when they go. Chuck only turns around to catch the smile on Bryce's face.
"Yeah, let's."
And there is no hesitance when he adds, breathless.
XXX Kuro
I just really think Bryce deserves alllll the happiness in the world okay.