Umm, how do I even explain this one besides the fact that Tim Dekay played Kieran Ryker and Matt Bomer played Bryce Larkin, the two of which are Peter Burke and Neal Caffrey from White Collar? I am sorry, but WHY IS THERE NO MORE OF THIS PAIRING?! (Come on, just imagine the possibilities!)
Note: I don't see your (il)logical fact that not only has the two of them never met in official canon, their story arcs never even overlapped, or that they are both technically very very dead. If you haven't clicked the back button yet, I must warned: this is also my very first chuck fic. Spoilers for most of Chuck but especially S5E08: Chuck vs the Baby.
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Seven Days (& seven ways this doesn't have to end the way it does)
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Sarah is good.
She plays well within the rules. She doesn't think herself invincible. And well, Sarah doesn't trust easily.
They assign her a new handler. They don't give her a name or a face, just a time and a place. She supposes she can say no. Given she has been with the CIA for several years, give or take a few, this is a whole lot more to go on than the usual flimsy file she is handed, not that this is a case or that she is told what had happened to her last handler.
This is also a lot more complicated than it has to be.
She meets her handler in a café, a small delicate place with painted iron tables and big umbrellas beneath the sun. It is Monday, noon when a man in a suit sits directly across from her. They order coffees they don't drink and size each other up like they are opponents even when they are technically allies.
Sarah notes that he has dark hair and darker eyes.
"Kieran Ryker."
He offers and doesn't quite smile at her.
But it isn't like she smiles back either.
000
They recruit him in his fourth year at Stanford.
He drops by during Professor Flemming's Tuesday office hours and sits down carefully across from the man.
One future resurrection and two Intersects later, it turns out to be a mistake on their part and possibly the only thing Bryce doesn't regret doing with his life (but neither party knows that, not yet anyway.) They give him training in everything, things he needs in the field when the last bullet is fired and there are still a dozen men coming after you. They teach him foreign languages, lessons in blending in, standing out, punching through glass (they suggest you'd rather kick through it though) and then some more.
They partner him up with Agent Walker in the end.
She doesn't smile at him until he proves his worth, and even when he does, she seldom does. She has a handler he has never seen (even though, technically her handler is a little like his handler's handler too) and in mutual respect, he has a best friend she never meets.
The two of them take on missions after missions, and it's all a win until someone loses.
And his loss is made up of a few key things: Professor Flemming, his best friend, and Omaha.
A year later, Chuck is kicked out of Stanford for cheating. He isn't sorry.
000
Sarah loses him to the Intersect the same time she learns the good guys are very much like bad guys. But she doesn't know that, she still has another week to go in Budapest before she is due to return, package in hand.
Unlike Bryce and the Intersect, however, Ryker doesn't make a mess. He doesn't even make a splash and really, that is the problem here.
She doesn't make a kill shot at him and leaves him with a wounded shoulder. She disappears into the crowd and he disappears all together. She hears he goes rogue, she sees his files go black, she tries not to feel betrayed.
The baby screams loudly in the barebones of the hotel room and she wants it to shut up but doesn't really have the heart to say it out loud. Not that the baby girl understands a thing she has to say.
Sarah doesn't think it is as simple as money.
But people have killed for much less, she knows, she does their bidding without questions. Sarah gives the child one last feeding and puts her to bed. She goes home on Wednesday, hands off the package to the only person in the world she can still afford to trust and swears she will never see her own blood and flesh again.
Her mother doesn't cry, it comes close though.
000
Bryce dies on a Thursday.
(Watches carefully as Casey and those trigger-happy fingers gun him down.) And it really hurts. He, himself, remembers the sharp pain but he tries not to think that it matters at all when what matters is that he dies and he is not coming back to life.
He closes his eyes as his head lolls to the side, the machine in his hand burns out.
It starts as a dulling pain, and then it spreads like a wild fire across his chest. And while the world is still at bay, he knows the CIA isn't quite willing to let him go that completely, just yet. And the CIA has always had a bad habit of picking him up, bloody and mangled and dead to the world, and fixing him to working conditions.
This time, it is no different. Bryce is resurrected and wakes up in a white room with no holes in the centre of his chest and no blood bleeding red against his dress shirt.
That's also the moment he meets his ex-handler's ex-handler.
000
Like everything, it starts with an assignment no one wants to take.
But the higher ups has their own opinion of what needs to be done, their own version of right and wrong that has little to do with the black and white aspect of justice and more to do with beneficial parties and dirty money being passed beneath a table.
Ryker doesn't sit at the edge of the bed but he does stare at the body lying motionless across the plain white sheets. The heart monitor beeps steadily even when the man's chest don't rise and fall with each breath. The only things to indicate that the other is still alive are the barest quivers of lashes and the rapid movements underneath his eyelids.
He stands by the bed, like a guard, even when this is just punishment for losing the package and pretending to go rogue that one time for the sake of appearances only. He waits and he waits and then on a Friday, the man on the bed opens his eyes with a soft gasp.
Kieran Ryker looks down and comes to see a wide expanse of blue.
He doesn't know what he has been expecting. Though he must add, it isn't this at any rate.
"Ryker…"
And it is a whole other thing to hear his name being muttered that way. Kieran steps forward, almost looming. "Welcome back to the world of the living, Agent Larkin."
Bryce sits up slowly with a small quirk curving at the edge of his lips. "…How's Sarah?"
"Pissed." He hands over a cup of water that Bryce doesn't drink. He merely licks his lips with a swipe of his tongue and asks. "At you or at me?"
"More you than me now that you've got yourself shot by John Casey. I'm on the backburner thanks to you, Bryce." Kieran takes the cup back without another glance and takes a drink from it, the rim just hiding the faintest hint of the start of a smile. He makes another offer to the other agent.
"No problem at all." While Bryce doesn't take the cup in his hands again, he leans forward to place his lips over where Kieran has just pressed his. And he waits until the other finds the generosity to tip the cup to tilt his head back, baring his throat to a man he is still contemplating whether he can trust, and drinks from his hands.
Pulling back slow, there is a smirk that is just on the edge of wild and dangerous. Bryce looks up from beneath his lashes and says, lips wet.
"Thanks."
The answer is no. (Not now, not ever.)
000
Ryker supposes it hurts less than it looks.
Except it still hurts a whole fucking lot. He knows he should kill her when he has the chance, he also knows Bryce won't really forgive him.
Sarah is a special thing to Bryce Larkin, just like the human Intersect (and that is a mess Kieran has no intention of getting involved in.) He can say it isn't about the money, except it is, it has always been about stopping other men (those in the higher ranks, his bosses' bosses) from getting to the little girl. He supposes he can explain that to Sarah, not that she will ever trust him, not that it really matters now that the child will always be safe.
Even though he has to die, a knife in the chest, through and through. A fact that is almost insignificant in the grand scheme of things that involves more soul selling deals and international incidents than he can care for.
He wakes up from his medical-induced coma and it is not exactly running away when he turns from the machines to see Bryce sitting in a plastic chair.
While it is probably the closest he will ever get to catching the young man dozing, Kieran opens his mouth because he has questions he wants answers to, like how or what or why or when. Instead, he says his name like it will give him everything he ever need or want.
"…Larkin."
"Morning, Kieran." Bryce blinks his eyes open like he has never even been asleep, not that either of them are still capable of sleep after this many years in the field, not without being medically put down at the very least.
There is a small trace of relief in the way his lips curl. "You've been under for several days, it's Saturday today, almost a week since. You want water?"
Kieran turns, despite the pain, to lie flat on his back once more. Breathing out a small sigh of relief of his own as he works out a mental schedule of the world that has passed while he has been under. Eventually, he gives a nod and says. "That sounds good."
When Bryce gets up, he hears the sound of the chair being pushed back. He feels the man cross the room, the drag of his footsteps like he doesn't want to go. Except that is absurd—
"Welcome back."
Kieran sits up just in time to catch Bryce closing the door behind him.
He doesn't doubt that he'll be back.
It's not trust or faith or anything even remotely alike. Ryker doesn't know what it is but it feels awfully like a string of coincidences (he refuses to call it fate) that they are here, together, like this.
000
Rogue agents have a way of finding each other.
And it isn't about finding a partner or needing someone at your back. It is about finding someone who has suffered the same fate as you and finally feeling like you can step down for another to take your place.
They bury Bryce in California even though he is from Connecticut, not that anyone cares or that it matters at all. Sarah, on the other hand, spreads his ashes in Lisbon for old times' sake.
He remembers seeing Chuck grinning even without hearing someone else speak in Klingon, he remembers Sarah's smiles that doesn't end in gunfights and being matted in blood that doesn't belong to them. He remembers their smiles and that they are happy together.
Bryce is standing by the gravestone of an accountant that never really got his version of a happy ending when Kieran walks up.
The other doesn't put a hand on his shoulder when he is close enough to touch (and it is with a stern control that he doesn't twist out of his grip in reflex and break the man's wrist.)
"Larkin."
"Kieran."
Ryker turns his head to look at the other. And no one smiles like that unless they are looking to run, either that or they are looking to get shot in the head, point blank. It's a sunny Sunday when they go.
In another life, Bryce doesn't have to die that many times. (In another life, Kieran is a good man, a much better man that doesn't need to kill his way through to protect.) In this life however, they get behind a sleek blue car and drives off beneath the sun. Bryce in a white dress shirt he has rolled up to his elbows, Kieran in a polo shirt with his jacket tossed in the back.
"There are 6.9 billion of us. Have you wondered at the possibilities?"
"That there is our other half out there?" He asks, entertaining the idea for the sake of the man sitting next to him. And hasn't he done all that he has for that simple notion, of having someone that gives just as much as he takes.
"Not our other half, per say." He clicks his tongue and that can be a tell the same way it isn't ever that easy to tell him apart, not that he wants to, not that he needs to. Not when the other man is looking at him like that when he finally supplies, "more like, another version of us."
"And how does that work?"
"…It wouldn't." And Bryce isn't one for magic, not when he reeks of tricks and badly concealed trust. Not when he reaches over to run a finger down Kieran's shirt, right over his heart where the knife wound has healed into a scar. "It wouldn't work at all."
Kieran glances over to catch Bryce smiling like this is the end he has been chasing after since the start. He can't help but think it might, that they might very well be good together like this.
XXX Kuro
Cue roadtrip romance for another time!