A/N: So I'm still working through season 2 and the episode of Chuck vs. the Beefcake might have Jossed me a bit. (And here I thought it might be such a unique idea, lol!) NEVERTHELESS, please enjoy. Also, the next part might be delayed as I have another multi-chapter story I absolutely have to work on before completing this.
"The Blood is Love: Part One - "Mother"
***
You ask when you're alone, "What is love?"
The blood is love
-Queens of the Stone Age
The air was stale and damp. Chuck could taste the barest hint of mildew in the corners of his mouth as he woke with a low groan of pain and sucked in a short, quick breath. He stirred sluggishly - the back of his head smarted fiercely from a blow he vaguely remembered. His cheek was smashed against something hard and it took him a moment to realize that he was lying on his side, the left half of his face pressed against what felt like cold concrete. The taste of copper coated the back of his throat; he probed the inside of his mouth gingerly with his tongue and felt where he'd bitten himself.
Chuck shifted and blearily became aware of himself again, fragments of thought sliding haphazardly in and out of place like a fifteen puzzle. He lifted his head and heard the clink of metal before he felt the heaviness of the collar around his neck. The fog of unconsciousness began to curl away more rapidly as alarm tore through him, nipping his senses into full wakefulness.
It took a few minutes before the room stopped lurching beneath him and for the feeling of nausea to recede. Chuck placed his palms on the ground, heaved himself upwards, and in the process discovered that the collar was attached to a thick metal chain. It pulled taut when Chuck tried to move forward and he was tugged off-balance. He cracked his knees against the hard floor with bruising force and an audible smack that echoed in his ears. He hissed in pain. Blindly, Chuck felt along the chain until his fingers encountered a thick metal ring riveted to a plate in the ground.
He was chained down - trapped - just like an animal.
All at once Chuck felt panic rear up in him. It threatened to steal his thoughts and swallow any good sense that he had left in his head. He managed - just barely - to tamp it down with considerable effort, though he couldn't quite chase the slight tremor from his limbs. He tried to get a handle on himself. He tried to remember what Casey had taught him to do in times of distress.
'If Walker and I aren't there, Bartowski, you've got to learn how to keep your head in a tense situation. Stay calm, breath deeply if you can, and try to establish a sense of your surroundings.'
Chuck screwed his eyes shut as he recalled Casey's words. He inhaled a deep breath through his nose and exhaled through his mouth, remembering some of the breathing techniques he'd seen Awesome practice while doing reps. Slowly, he could feel his panic begin to recede, pulling away from the edges of his mind and leaving him with a clearer head.
Chuck opened his eyes and again tried to pierce through the darkness to no avail. He strained to catch a glimpse of a wall or window - anything to give him an indication of what sort of place he was chained in - but he gave up trying after a few more minutes. It was pointless. Instead he listened, and eventually Chuck became aware of noise that sounded like the slow drip of water from a leaky faucet.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Dimly, Chuck managed to pinpoint the source of the noise to somewhere in front of him, at least several feet away. He listened to the way the dripping water echoed off of the walls in an attempt to ascertain some idea of the size of the room he was in. After several, silent minutes, head cocked to one side like a hound listening for the rustle of a coon, he figured he was at the very least in a basement of some sort.
The revelation wasn't at all reassuring.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Chuck wished someone would turn the faucet off, but most of all, he wished that someone else were there with him.
Chuck didn't know how long he'd sat there in the dark, chained to the floor, his long legs folded and cramped beneath him, but suddenly there was a 'click' and a light bulb overhead flared to life. Chuck tucked his chin, blinded for a moment by the shift in brightness and waited for his eyes to adjust to the new level of light. The light bulb swayed slightly above his head, casting a pale yellow glow on bare grey walls and a similarly bare grey floor. He was right - he was chained to a concrete floor in some dank basement.
Chuck looked up and blanched. He felt the cold, bony fingers of dread close around his throat in a tight, unforgiving grip. A choked noise escaped him, pulled along his throat, caught somewhere between a gasp and a shout. He'd located the source of the dripping.
Casey was in the room with him. The agent's hands were bound above his head, wrists tied together with what appeared to be thick nylon cords. His head was bowed forward, chin resting on his chest so that all Chuck could see of his face was a bit of his nose. Casey hung from a meat hook, legs dangling, his feet barely brushing the floor below him.
He'd been stripped down to his black boxers. Even from across the room, Chuck could see the dark bruises that mottled Casey's pale skin in a quilt work of purples and blues. Cutting across the bruises were stripes of red, thin lines scored into flesh. They criss-crossed Casey's torso in precise, almost artistic patterns, as if someone had painted over his body with crimson ink.
The dripping noise was from Casey's blood spreading beneath him, pooling on the concrete in a dark red stain.
Chuck felt what little there was in his stomach rush up throat. He vomited on the floor unceremoniously, heaving until he had nothing to purge but clear acid. Even then, Chuck felt like he could be sick over and over. Eventually, he looked back towards Casey, He tried to ascertain if the agent was simply unconscious or if he was...Chuck swallowed hard, unwilling to think about that.
"Casey," he hissed, looking around to see if they were alone. Near as far as he could tell they were - at least for the moment. Casey didn't respond, didn't twitch - didn't do anything at all. Chuck felt his chest tighten until he could scarcely breathe. Then he began to hyperventilate. "Casey buddy, please, c'mon, wake-up," he pleaded. He tugged at the chain tethering him to the ground, trying to free himself. His fear fed his panic and he began to claw at the collar around his neck in a frenzy. Finally, he shouted: "JOHN!"
At last, Casey moved. He lifted his chin ever so slightly and peered at Chuck through the dark fringe of his lashes.
"Bartowski," he grunted, his voice tight with pain, "shut up, will ya?"
Relief tore through Chuck. He dropped the chain and leaned towards Casey, trying to move as close to the other man as possible. "You're okay!" he exclaimed. His tone was almost hysterical and even to him, his voice was dangerously close to sounding unhinged.
Casey lifted his head a bit more and fixed him with an approximation of his usual glare. "If you call being captured by the enemy and tortured okay, then yeah, I'm okay." His tone was dry but Chuck was thankful just to hear the gruff sound of his voice. Quietly, Casey added: "Calm down, Bartowski. I ain't dead yet."
"No," said a new voice, sliding through the darkness like a knife cutting through a velvet sheet, "you're quite resilient, Agent Casey."
Chuck snapped his head around to look at the stranger, and from the corner of his eye he saw Casey do the same. He turned his attention to the big man once more, a slight feeling of awe sliding through him as he observed Casey's composure. The NSA agent was silent, his blue eyes hard as he studied every inch of the stranger - from the ends of her pristine black hair to the tips of her sensible black heels. Casey's gaze was flat and devoid of emotion, and for once Chuck was envious of his ability to separate himself so thoroughly from his own pain and feelings.
He looked back towards the woman who'd spoken. She was heavier set, her swarthy skin a deep mocha in the yellow glow of the single light bulb. She wore a dark blue suit - a power suit - and Chuck thought it suited her stoic bearing. Her features might have been pretty at one point, though Chuck could read the years of tough decisions in the set of her mouth and in the hard glint of her shrewd brown eyes.
She smiled then, thick lips pulling back from her teeth in a decidedly cold grin.
Chuck began to babble. "Look, miss, I dunno what you want with us but I can promise you we don't have anything you want -"
"-Shut up, you moron!" barked Casey, cutting him off. Chuck fell silent when he caught sight of the agent's withering glare.
The woman laughed and the noise was rich, like honey drizzled over razor wire. She walked over to Casey and cupped his cheek in one hand, trailing her thumb almost tenderly across his lips. Casey didn't try to jerk away, though he fixed her with an expression that would have turned a lesser person to dust. "You work for Fulcrum?" he grunted, remaining as still as one could while hanging from a hook.
The woman dragged her fingers across the bare skin of his chest, and then carefully dug the tips of her manicured nails into one of the lacerations curved across Casey's ribs. Past a quick twist of his lips, Casey otherwise showed no signs of discomfort as she pressed her fingers deeper into the wound.
Chuck winced for him. He forced down another bout of nausea when the woman brought her forefinger to her lips, and tasted the blood smeared across the tip with a quick flick of her tongue. "You can call me 'Mother', Agent Casey," she replied after a moment. "And who I work for is none of your concern."
Casey's upper lip curled into a derisive sneer. He lifted his chin defiantly and Chuck could see Casey's muscles tighten and roll beneath his skin, as if he were preparing to spring into action. Mother only shook her head. She snapped her fingers and Chuck felt the familiar hardness of a gun barrel suddenly pressed against the back of his head. He gulped. "I wouldn't think of doing anything stupid Agent Casey," Mother said. "One wrong move from you and your friend here will receive a history lesson in the stopping power of a Winchester 'Black Talon' at point blank range."
"Go ahead," replied Casey in a flat tone, "he doesn't have any intel you'd want, anyway. Any information you want, I have, and I ain't talking." Casey grinned at Mother and Chuck was momentarily taken aback by the rawness he saw in the curve of the other man's lips. "Either let him go or put a bullet in his head - I'm the one you need."
"Wait Casey, don't say that," Chuck stammered, feeling resentful and hurt of and by the agent's words. "You can't mean that..they'll -"
"Shut up you idiot," snarled Casey. His words were coated with anger and Chuck saw a flicker of something behind his piercing blue gaze. He snapped his mouth shut and fell silent. The gun was removed and Chuck saw a non-descript man with blonde hair wearing jeans and a black shirt, move to stand off to one side.
Mother looked back and forth between the two of them, a wry smile settled on her lips. "Interesting," she commented. She crossed to Chuck and crooked a finger beneath his chin, forcibly tilting his face upward. She dissected him with her eyes, parting his defenses with a long, appraising stare. After a moment she said, "Do you know, Mr. Bartowski, how we break someone like Agent Casey?"
Chuck's only reply was: "H-how do you know my name?"
Mother tousled his hair and her nails scraped lightly over his scalp, almost pleasantly. Chuck jerked back from the contact. "I know many things about you, Mr. Bartowski." she answered softly. Her gaze flicked to Casey and Chuck followed her line of sight, disliking the gleam that entered Mother's eyes. "Physical violence has no effect for breaking people like Agent Casey," she said conversationally, "though it has its merits. Agent Casey is a particularly beautiful specimen in this regard, primed for the various methods that one might employ in extracting information from someone." She turned back to Chuck. "Don't you agree, Mr. Bartowski?"
Chuck, who hadn't taken his eyes off of Casey, briefly dropped his gaze to touch upon the smooth play of muscle that rolled beneath big man's bruised skin. 'Beautiful,' thought Chuck, 'isn't entirely accurate.' "I, uh, I guess," he stammered and hastily tuggied his gaze back to Casey's face. The agent wore a blank expression, but Chuck thought he could see something lurking in the tense set of his mouth.
"There are several other ways to break a man like that," Mother continued. She disappeared from Chuck's line of sight for a moment and he heard the sound of a switch being thrown. Suddenly, the wall behind Casey was illuminated and Chuck couldn't stifle his gasp. The wall was lined with rows of what could only be implements of torture. Many, many implements of torture. "As you can see," Mother said, returning to stand in front of Chuck, "I have several options."
"I'll say," Chuck replied, his voice barely above a whisper. His mouth was suddenly very dry.
Mother leaned down to whisper in his ear. "The best way to break men like Agent Casey isn't with violence or drugs. The best way is to force them to face their humanity…and then to destroy it. It's the most permanent damage that can be caused to men like him."
Chuck blinked. "Oh?" he offered lamely. He looked past Mother's ear towards Casey, who was looking back at him intently.
"Yes," replied Mother. She straightened and smiled down at him. "And you are integral to this...Chuck. I believe that Agent Casey is more attached to you than you realize." She looked over her shoulder at Casey and then gestured to the blonde-haired man who had been standing unobtrusively off to one side. The man moved to the rack of torture devices and removed a series of thick brass rings, which he slipped over the fingers of his left hand.
"Wait, wait!" Chuck said hastily, panic edging his words. "Casey doesn't even like me, you're wrong about that." He locked eyes with the agent who was shaking his head vehemently at him, clearly telling him to shut the hell up. Chuck pretended not to understand. "Don't hurt him anymore." He looked up at Mother. "Please."
"Do you want to save your friend, Mr. Bartowski?" Mother asked. Chuck licked his lips and nodded. "Good," she said. "All you need to do is answer my questions - honestly."
"O-okay," Chuck replied, uncertainly.
"Don't answer a damn thing, Bartowski!" Casey growled. "Look, Mother," he said in a clipped, flat tone, "the nerd doesn't know anything. If you need to know something then ask me. Let him go - he fixes computers for a living. He shouldn't even be here."
Mother eyed the agent, her head tilted thoughtfully to one side. "Let's start with an easy question, Mr. Bartowski: Are you in love with Agent John Casey?"
Chuck blurted, "What?! No, I mean, what?"
Mother clicked her tongue in disappointment and Chuck loosed a choked cry as the tow-headed man crashed his fist into Casey's face. When he pulled his hand back, the brass rings were smeared with blood. Mother looked at him. "Care to think about your answer?"
(To be continued...)