Chuck Versus the Christmas Caper
By Steampunk . Chuckster
Summary: New Christmas traditions bring Chuck, Ellie, and Devon to the small beach resort of Capitola, California for a three week vacation. But his holiday plans for fun under the Northern California sun don't play out the way Chuck expects them to when other vacationers staying in the beachfront hotel start raising his suspicions. Can he maintain a new friendship with a fascinating and beautiful neighbor while getting to the bottom of this Christmas caper?
A/N: Thanks for the reviews and for reading!
Disclaimer: I do not own Chuck and I'm not making any money by writing and posting this fic.
He blinked his eyes open to see a hazy shape floating over him. A human-shaped shape. With eye-shaped eyes, a nose-shaped nose, a mouth-shaped mouth, really pretty blond hair…sunlight trickling down around it and making it shiny.
"Pretty," he muttered dreamily without really understanding what was going on, why there was something cold, hard, and damp under his back, why he was lying down, why he'd been sleeping on the ground…
"Hey, you okay?"
Chuck shook his head a little and felt woozy, dizzy even. "Oh holy shit the-the earth is…whoa spin-spin-spinning. Whoooooaaaa-kay. Whoa."
"It's okay. Shut your eyes for a second. Just stay like this until the dizziness goes away. I'm right here, I've got you."
Things were coming back to him now, and he'd never been so mortified in his entire life. Oh God, why was he so stupid? So so so stupid?
Could she maybe just leave him lying here and keep running and then he could go back to the hotel, lock himself in his suite, in his bedroom, and hide under the bed until he died? He'd never see her again an she'd forget about this, about him in general, and he would grow dimmer and dimmer in her memories of this vacation she took to Capitola one winter when she was young.
"Chuck? You still with me?"
"Barely," he mumbled, wincing, his eyes still shut.
"What's that mean? You gonna lose consciousness again? Wait, did you hit your head when you went down? Shit," he heard her curse under her breath, and he felt a cool hand on his forehead, fingers gracing his temple, and then pushing into his curls, as if she was searching for a wound or bump, blood or something.
"No, no. 'Least I don't think I hit my head. Um…" He blinked his eyes open and this time she was much clearer, concern in her gorgeous face, her forehead and her neck a little dewy with sweat, the blond tendrils of hair that escaped her ponytail coiled a little and tamped down against her temple.
"Ready to sit up?"
"Uh, um, yeah. Yeah, uh huh." He nodded, and thankfully he wasn't assailed with dizziness again. She wrapped an arm around his back and put her other hand on his waist, helping him to sit up and scoot a little back to lean against the seat of the bench behind him.
"Good," she mumbled.
"Welp." He let out a rough cough, still unable to suck in a full breath from how hard he'd been running to try to keep up with her. He'd called her Speedy Sarah but that didn't even come close to selling it properly. It undersold it terribly, actually.
Because she was faster-than-a-speeding-bullet fast. Jesus Christ. "Sorry, I—" He coughed into his fist again.
"Feeling okay?" She squeezed his shoulder. It felt really good.
"Yeah," he said honestly. Still, his limbs felt like jelly, and his head was swimming. "Did I…seriously just faint? Oh my God." He buried his face in his hands, mortified.
"Hey. Stop." She curled her fingers around one of his wrists and pulled his hand away from his face so that he was forced to look at her, meeting her blue gaze. "How much water are you drinking?"
"Coffee."
"What?"
"That's mostly what I have in my veins right now," he explained, still breathless from all of the insanely fast-paced running. "Coffee."
"Oh my God. Are you drinking any water?"
"Technically coffee is brewed using water." She rolled her eyes and he cleared his throat. "Um. Here and there, sure."
She rolled her eyes to the sky this time and shook her head, letting out a cute giggle. "Yeah. Okay. So not only is this your second run of the morning, not only are my runs intense at a level I probably don't entirely realize at this point, you aren't drinking enough water. Coffee doesn't count as hydrating, Chuck."
"But it's so good."
"Not gonna argue with you there." She reached up and picked a leaf out of his hair. "That freaked me out, you know. I realized you weren't running next to me anymore so I turned around, and you had stopped a few paces back. You looked at me for a second, then you swayed, and your eyes rolled back so I could only see the whites of them for a second, and then it was like your knees just buckled. And you crumbled to the ground." Chuck winced, regretting a lot of things in that moment, including forcing her to let him run with her. "I thought to myself, 'Oh great, now I've given this nice man a heart attack.'" He snorted. "Limbs feel heavy?"
"A…a little. Yeah."
"Okay." She turned to look around at the shops on either side of the street and stopped, apparently finding what she needed because she spun back to him and grabbed him by his arm and his waist, respectively. "Come on. Let's get you up on the bench at least so you don't look like a nut to people going past."
"I am a nut, so it makes sense for me to look like one," he said. And still, he let her help him get up to sit on the bench. He plopped down onto it heavily and made a face when it was still a little damp from the morning dew. Not too bad, though. At least.
Sarah snorted. "Wait here, huh? I'm gonna be right back."
"W-Where—?" But she'd already jogged across the street, looking for cars as she went, and then she ducked into a corner market. Chuck slumped forward and buried his face between his knees, taking deep, measured breaths. He'd made stupid decisions for a girl before, over-drinking at a frat party to impress, jumping off of the roof of a frat house into a pool to impress, that time in sixth grade that he tried to backflip off of the swing on the playground and sprained his wrist. That was fun, considering a sixteen year old Ellie had to figure out how to get him medical treatment without telling doctors at a hospital that their parents were MIA, getting them pulled out of their home and sent off to separate foster families.
This took the cake, though. Because he was a grown-ass adult now. Twenty-six years old. Old enough to know better. But the fact was that he hadn't just been trying to impress Sarah by thinking he could do two runs back to back—the second of which was a lot faster and, like she'd warned before they left, way way more intense—he was also trying to just be around her. And if she was going to be on a run, he wanted to be on that run with her.
Which was so freaking silly.
And she looked back at her room before she answered him, too, which made him wonder if there was someone else in that room. She didn't wear any rings on her fingers because of course he'd kinda looked for that. But that didn't mean anything. Was she in a relationship? Was she here with the person she was in a relationship with? Is that why she looked at the room? As if trying to decide whether it was okay to go on a run with this other guy?
They were just hanging out, chatting, running—or, rather, in his case, running until he nearly passed out from overworking his body oops. There was nothing threatening about this, right? Sure, she made him feel a little bit like he was floating, but he just liked being in her orbit, liked having conversations with her. That was all.
But then he let his mind wander to his own run he'd been on, and how he'd had to stop once he got onto the premises of the hotel because he'd seen the purple-haired girl again, this time sitting on a short brick wall off to the side of another small garden area and vaping, all wrapped up in a long overcoat.
A third person he hadn't seen yet was standing next to her, his beanie pulled down tight over his shoulder length hair, casting his gaze around the place, as if looking to see if anyone else was out, if anyone might look and see them. Suspicious, to say the least.
He looked like he was in his forties or so, and he had the same facial hair as Vincent Price in House of Wax, salt and pepper. And his eyes were a piercing blue too. Chuck knew they were piercing blue because, like an idiot, Chuck had just stood there, huffing and puffing, staring at them, and the Vincent Price guy caught him staring, and stared right back.
Chuck had leapt into action immediately, chuckling a little and lifting a hand to wave, before he jogged right towards them. He very clearly read the way the purple-haired girl looked up with her dark eyes, watching him approach, almost a hint of fear in her face. And Vincent Price kept flicking his blue eyes down at her and back up to Chuck, his body tense, like he was ready to pounce. Chuck had kept jogging and as he neared, he kept up his calm pace and waved again. "Crazy seein' people out this early. Thought I'd be the only human life around these parts. Mornin'!"
And he jogged past them then as Vincent Price muttered, "G'morning."
Chuck didn't look back, but as he rounded the corner, he slowed to a stop and crept pack to peek as sneakily as possible around again. Purple blew another stream of vapor into the air, tilting her head back. She said something he couldn't hear, but it seemed to annoy Vincent Price who turned to look down at her and say something snappy. But then he spun to face Chuck and the corner he hid behind and Chuck pulled back quickly, unsure about whether he was seen or not, and sprinted like a bat outta hell back to his suite.
Was he followed, did the guy even see him? He didn't know, but he didn't chance looking back. He'd just run for it, not stopping until he skidded around the corner in front of his place. There he finally slid to a halt, taking deep, gulping breaths. That was when Sarah spoke to him. And relief settled in him. The rest was history.
But he couldn't help wondering now, replaying Purple and her face, that significant look she'd sent him… Was she sending him a message? Was it SOS? She'd seemed nervous. Like he wasn't supposed to be there, seeing her vaping on that wall. And Vincent Price had seemed like he hadn't wanted her to be seen there either.
What in the hell was going on with that?
And then he heard the sound of footsteps running up to him and he glanced up to see Sarah returned with a glistening bottle of water in her hand, already twisting the cap off as she slowed near him. "Here. Drink some water."
He made a face. "It's not even eight in the morning. I can't drink water until at least, like, eleven AM."
"Will you freaking drink that? Dear God."
"Right. Sorry." Blushing he threw back a few sips. God, that did feel pretty good. He sighed in relief and drank some more.
"Better?"
"Yeah, actually. Thank you. How much do I owe you for the…?" She sent him a look. "Oh come on. I not only interrupted your run with my weird passing out shenanigans because I'm not nearly as in shape as I thought I was, I now cost you… I can't imagine a bottle of water in this town is cheap."
"It's a bottle of water. I can afford it. Drink some more. You're dehydrated."
He sighed, relenting, and he downed the rest of the bottle, tightening his fist to smash the plastic in his hand. "There."
"Good. Thank you."
"No, thank you. For, um, not just…I dunno, I doubt you would'a just left me on the ground where I collapsed, but still. This was kind. Especially 'cause it's all my own fault."
She shook her head with a smile and plopped onto the bench next to him, not seeming to care about the dew on the seat even though her stretchy pants had to be thinner than his sweats. "I was probably overdoing it, even more so than usual. I kinda lose my mind when I'm running sometimes."
"Oh, yeah?" He shook his head and pursed his lips. "I didn't notice."
"Shut up," she giggled, bumping him with her shoulder. "It's my mechanism for dealing with…frustration." She squirmed uncomfortably. "It burns it off. I wasn't really paying attention to whether or not I was getting too…"
"Intense?" he provided when she paused. She gave him a wincing smile and nodded. "You warned me," he chuckled. "You had frustration to burn off?"
"Who doesn't?" she said with a shrug.
"Touché." She'd answered that in a way that made it difficult to ask why she was frustrated. And that was probably why she did it. She was good at tiptoeing around stuff, he noticed. He didn't blame her. He was still a stranger, even if they had exchanged names.
"Still seein' spots?" she asked kindly, lifting her hand in front of his face and swiping it back and forth by his eyes.
It was cute and he couldn't help emitting a giggle. "Nah, no spots. They were there for sure. But they're gone now."
"Good." She nodded.
Chuck blushed and reached over to toss the bottle into the recycle bin at the end of the bench. "Sorry I wrecked your run, Sarah." He purposely didn't look at her, instead staring squintingly across the street at a young family walking along holding hands, wearing their coats and matching hats. "Um, I sorta thought I was made of tougher stuff."
She snorted and he did look at her, not expecting that response. She did a double take looking at him. "Oh come on, you didn't wreck my run," she chuckled with a smirk. "Your minor medical emergency forced me to stop, which is a good thing. Because I would've hated myself all day if I'd gone the whole way at this insane pace. I might not've keeled over like you, but my body would probably hurt all the way into tomorrow. And that's definitely not healthy. I'm just sorry you had to basically pass out to pull me out of my zone."
She diverted her gaze for a moment, frowning, and then her blue eyes swept up to meet his brown ones and she smiled softly. "I'm glad you're okay."
"We should probably sit here for a few more minutes, just to make sure." He hit her with one of his slow smiles and she looked away again, her own smile widening. "I just mean, ya know, my legs are a little…wobbly probably."
She let out a bubbly chuckle and shook her head. "What did I get myself into?"
"I know, you really should've said no when I asked if I could go on your run with you." And then he paused, thoughtfully.
"What?" she asked, leaning forward and closer to him at the same time, peering up at him dubiously through her eyelashes.
He turned to glance at her and crossed his arms, pressing his lips tightly together. "I was just thinking, my sister probably would smack me upside the head if she knew I'd done this to you." She furrowed her brow, wordlessly chastising. "And to myself," he added. She looked mollified slightly at that. "Captain Awesome would probably give me a thumbs up and a toothy grin like, 'Good for you, bro, pushing yourself! That's what I like to see!'" he boomed in his best Devon Woodcomb impression.
She laughed. "He's one of those?"
"Like I said, he's awesome. He's the reason why I jog in the first place. He's a good influence to have around. I'd be a lazy blob and super unhealthy if he didn't regularly get me off my ass to go with him on runs."
"He sounds pretty awesome." But she didn't offer anything else, just smiling as she looked down at her sneaker and scuffed the toe against the sidewalk purposefully.
"Did you come here alone?"
God, he really needed to stop this blurting-stuff-out thing he was doing. She looked at him with wide eyes.
"Sorry. I'm full of personal questions."
"Here being…this spot right now? On this bench? No. Um, actually, I had a running partner, but he doesn't drink enough water and he nearly died while we were running."
"He sounds like a real putz."
She giggled. "Well, he isn't. Thank you very much." She sent him a faux glare. "But he definitely needs to drink more water, even if it is before eight in the morning."
Chuck winced. "Don't worry, I've internalized this teaching moment and I will do better moving forward."
She giggled again. "I hope so. I don't want to see you like that again. Freaked me out."
"I'm genuinely so sorry."
"It's okay."
"But you didn't answer my question. I mean, you did but it was a cute little deflection. Cute, but still a deflection."
She blushed, ducking her head. "You noticed that, did you?"
"Mhm." He bumped her shoulder this time. "Hey, I know it's a personal question. I don't mean to make you uncomfortable so you don't have to answer, it's okay. I guess I was just curious because earlier, you kept looking back at your room when I asked if I could run with you." He narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. "Earlier than that even, when I asked if you wanted to grab coffee with me." She gave him a curious look and he thought he sensed some dubiousness too. "Okay fine I shouldn't be admitting this. But full disclosure, it kind of made me wonder if there's…somebody else in there? Somebody else you're here with I mean. Somebody who may or may not mind you going for a run with…someone who wasn't them."
He shouldn't have admitted that. He knew it. And he looked away, knowing he was making himself look really foolish. None of this was any of his business.
"I see," she said, nodding slowly. "I'm vacationing alone."
"Got it. Cool." He left it at that because any more digging for information about her private life was going to alienate her. He felt that she was that sort of a person. He'd already pushed it a tad, maybe. "Well you already know that I'm not…vacationing alone. Don't know why I said that. I'm…ahem…"
"You're struggling a little there, aren't you?"
"Oh my God!" He laughed as she gave him a toothy grin with her tongue poking out a bit. "Wow, thank you. Thank you for noticing."
"I'm teasing," she giggled, nudging his sneaker closest to her with her own. "Here, maybe this'll make you feel better. I wondered the same thing about you when we were talking on the beach the other day and you were talking to someone on the phone about a baguette or whatever." She shrugged one shoulder cutely. "It was obviously someone you were here with, and I could tell it was a woman. So there you go. I wondered."
He made a huh! face and crossed his arms. "So what you're saying is we're both humans."
"Yes. And maybe we're both weird, too."
Chuck gasped in faux offense, spreading his palm against his chest. "Weird? Me? Excuse me? The nerve." She giggled and rolled her eyes. When they both sobered up, Chuck feeling a lot better suddenly, both physically after his scare, and emotionally after her admission, he cleared his throat. "Hey, do you think, uh…you wanna grab coffee? Maybe some breakfast? I know there's a place right around the corner with bomb egg burritos."
She raised an eyebrow and pursed her lips. "Yeah. Okay."
"That means your run is over, though."
"Not necessarily. We can run to this egg burrito place." She hopped up and made like she was going to run. Panic coursed through Chuck's body but he still burst to his feet, ready to run after her. Sarah stopped, cracking up, and she grabbed him by the forearm, both hands wrapped around him. "Wait, wait. Oh my God! I'm joking! You're crazy," she said through her laughter.
"Oh, right. Heh." He chuckled and shrugged helplessly.
"Let's go ahead and walk. Slowly. And you can double fist a water with your coffee, too."
Chuck gave her a wide-eyed look as they crossed the street. "Yeah, I think you'd get along with my sister."
She laughed and hip checked him gently as he gasped and dramatically staggered to the side, making her laugh even harder.
}o{
After buying one of those mass market popular suspense mystery yarns at the gift shop, Sarah hightailed it to her room just before the hotel's overdone Christmas lights flickered on. The sun wasn't all the way down, the sky not dark, but she'd gotten caught in the jolly white, red, and green lights strewn about, dangling from the roofs of the stucco buildings, that first night, and she'd looked at the time. It had been a little after five. Which meant for the rest of her trip, she'd hole up in her room by five. That limited her Christmas spirit exposure at least a little bit.
And she knew doing this meant she wasn't really living in the real world. And wasn't that the point of leaving the CIA? Stepping back into the real world and being a real girl? Having normal experiences like egg falling out of her burrito and onto her lap when she goes to bite it and having the man sitting across from her on the bench laugh hard enough that he chokes on his own food. For instance.
Sarah lifted her eyes from the page of her new book and smiled. The jerk deserved it.
Granted, he'd had a harrowing morning himself.
She was still confused even all these hours later, though. He'd pushed himself hard enough that he'd nearly killed himself keeping up with her, and after he'd already gone on a run himself earlier. It was mind boggling.
And when she turned to see why he wasn't with her anymore and saw him crumble to the sidewalk as if the puppeteer had cut his strings, she felt her heart seize in her chest. The guy was really out for a good ten seconds before she could get him to open his eyes again.
She imagined it was embarrassing for him, but he was a good sport about it anyway. And he bought her coffee for her to repay her for buying him the bottle of water, and when she argued the coffee was more expensive than the water, he insisted the fact that she saved his life made up for the balance.
What was more, she had a really good morning. An exceptional morning, even.
It was a morning that had lasted into the afternoon. He'd tried to tell her that he was giving his sister and her boyfriend the suite so that they could at least have "some sort of romantic something", was how he explained it, while they were on their holiday vacation. And then he'd made a grossed out face, and she wasn't sure yet if he'd been trying to make her laugh or if he'd been sincere in his disgust. But she also felt like he'd maybe just used it as an excuse to get her to go back onto the beach to sit and continue talking.
Again, it felt like they continued to talk about nothing, skirting around tough subjects, things that might cause them to veer too deeply into things she specifically didn't want to talk about. And she'd slipped right into it like it was the most natural thing in the world. Not for nothing, in the past few days she'd laughed more times than she had in the twenty six plus years she'd been alive put together.
She needed to step lightly, though, and she knew that. Because she couldn't let herself fall into some kind of…something. Sitting and chatting? That was just fine. Letting him in, letting him know about her? She couldn't have that. In a few weeks, she'd go back to Langley, and she'd end her career with the CIA. That chapter of her life would be over and another would begin. She couldn't have anything in this chapter bleed over into the next chapter.
She needed a clean break. She'd told some Jesuit professor in the airport her name was Sarah, and now she told this guy who she knew liked sitting on the beach, drinking coffee, and chatting and that was about all she knew about him. When she left Capitola behind, she'd cut Sarah—Sarah Walker, the CIA agent—away from her existence, and anyone who knew her as that would go with it.
Sarah began to think about names she'd always liked. She'd always liked how Monica sounded. Better yet, Veronica. She could go with something older, more traditional, like Elizabeth or Rebecca. Or she could swing in the other direction with a name like Jade, or maybe Sage? Violet?
She had time to figure it out.
Leaning back, she kicked her feet up on the coffee table in front of her and stretched the mass market book up over her head, her shoulders popping, letting out a jaw cracking yawn. But right as she slipped down to get a little more comfortable, there was a knock on the door.
Sarah frowned at first, and then she realized that she'd ordered room service for dinner. Crab cakes and risotto with a salad, vinaigrette on the side.
"Duh," she droned, pushing up to her feet, folding the page of the book she was on, and setting it down to head for the door.
She opened it to find a hotel employee standing there grinning up at her from the steps as he carefully lifted a large tray covered by a dome towards her.
"Good evening. You ordered the crab cakes and risotto? Salad with vinaigrette on the side?" he read off of the tag poking out between his fingers.
"That's mine. Thank you so much. Sorry, these stairs must make room service kinda suck for you guys, huh?"
"Oh, we're used to the stairs," he chuckled. "Let me take it in for you. Tray is kind of hot."
She held the door for him and he pushed into her room, setting it on the closest horizontal surface. She tipped him and he thanked her, trotting down the steps and rolling his cart down the path back towards the lobby. She was about to duck back inside and eat her dinner, but she caught movement in the direction the hotel employee had gone, so she froze and glanced up to find the door—that particular door—open.
Out stepped a man with a familiar head of dark curls. Or, rather, he staggered a bit sillily, his hands over his head. He tilted his chin back and called to the heavens: "Sustenaaaaaaance! We are coming for yooooou!"
Sarah quickly shoved at her door and got out of sight, but she didn't merely shut her door and eat her food, minding her own business. She continued to hide—why, she didn't even know—and instead shut the door just enough that they wouldn't know it was open, peeking through the crack to watch as he jauntily jogged down the steps outside of his suite's door, then turned with his hand on the railing to watch as a blond man in a button-up light blue polo and Bermuda shorts, looking straight out of an Abercrombie & Fitch ad, stepped out. Wasn't he cold?
"Bro, I'm starving," he announced, but before he could go down the steps, a gorgeous brunette woman—Chuck's sister, no doubt, and the A&F model was her boyfriend she assumed—skipped through the door and crashed into the blonde's back. "Ey! Jesus Christ, Ellie," he laughed. Awesome, wasn't it? Captain Awesome. She could see the reason for the nickname.
"Well, maybe if you worked out less you wouldn't be like one of those giant Ellis Island heads, you big ol' freaking in-the-way wall."
"Ellis…" Chuck barked out a laugh, shaking his head. "Sis, did you mean Easter Island?"
"Oh." She snorted and giggled. "They're both E's. Who really cares?"
"The Statue of Liberty," Captain Awesome said as if that was the most obvious answer.
They all cracked up and Sarah found herself grinning, spying from behind the crack in the door still. They'd been drinking. Obviously. But it was mostly obvious in Ellie, who was very clearly drunk. The guys just seemed a little buzzed, but when Captain Awesome got to the bottom of the stairs, she went halfway down, then let out an excited "Wheee!" and leapt onto her boyfriend's back.
"Awaaaay, my sexy steed!"
Sarah bit down on her cheek hard to keep from letting out a sudden and loud laugh.
Chuck groaned. "That's so gross. You don't get a pass just 'cause you got sloppy off vodka, El."
"Fuck you! I'm on vacation!"
Sarah decided "Fuck you, I'm on vacation" was her new favorite response to everything. Anything and everything. Graham's bullshit? Fuck you, I'm on vacation. Memories from her past coming back to haunt her? Fuck you, I'm on vacation. Anything that had to do with her mom or that baby? Fuck you, I'm on vacation. That asshole who catcalled her when she was on a run the other morning? Fuck you, I'm on vacation. It was perfect.
"To the tacos!" Chuck cried out.
"God, yes," Ellie groaned happily, hopping off of her boyfriend's back again but slinging her arms around him. Sarah inched the door open a bit more as they walked away so that she could still see them. "I could eat, like, thirty al pastor tacos right now."
"What do you get when you mix hangry Ellie with drunk Ellie?" the blonde asked, their voices sort of starting to fade as they neared the corner they'd turn behind to get to the front of the hotel. She hoped they weren't about to drive a vehicle.
"Drangry Ellie?" Chuck answered quickly.
"Annnnnnnnd fuck you both."
They were gone, leaving Sarah Walker, soon-to-be-ex-agent with the CIA, stepping out onto her tiny square porch, just staring at the space they'd occupied, her grin dimming just slightly. She pulled her lips in between her teeth and sighed, then went back into her room, shutting the door behind her and heading to the table to take her dinner out onto the porch to eat alone.
}o{
Chuck Bartowski leaned over the map along with the concierge.
"See this road here? Just hop on Soquel Drive, follow it all the way, it becomes Vienna…you gotta veer left though. Danube is here. Park here." Jamison the concierge made a circle on the map with his red pen. "It's my personal favorite in the area and it will take less than ten minutes to drive there. Do you have a car? If not, we can call you ride share."
"We drove up so we're all good on that front," Chuck said. "Thanks. And we probably won't be going today. Kind of one of those late start days for us, but hey, vacation right?"
"That's right, sir." Jamison grinned.
Chuck took the map and folded it up. "Thanks so much for the advice, Jamison. Really appreciate it. We'll let you know how we like the trailhead when we finally go to it and stop being so lazy."
"Hey. Vacation," Jamison responded, making Chuck point at him with a chuckle. "Let me know if I can be of anymore help, sir."
"Thanks so much. We will."
He couldn't wait to tell his sister and her boyfriend that their was a trailhead called "Carmichael Trailhead". His alter ego, the man he would've been if shit hadn't hit the fan at Stanford. The yacht-owning, tech company CEO who golfed on weekends and might say things about 401Ks and whatever. And he'd watch CNBC unironically and not just when the Olympics were on.
Charles Carmichael had his own trailhead named after him. Rad.
But then as he walked away from the front desk, he spotted Mr. Tattoo Sleeves. He had his phone against his ear and was walking straight towards Chuck. Stepping back and out of his way, he unfolded the map with a flick of his wrist and lifted it up to cover his face, making a, "Hmmmmmm" sound. As if that wasn't suspicious at all.
"Well give Johnny a fuckin' call. …We need to switch out the cars if we go anywhere, that's why…"
Chuck froze. And he slowly lowered the map, peeking over it to watch Mr. Tattoo Sleeves stomp off past the front desk and out of the doors to the driveway, striding around the edge of the building and disappearing from view.
He was nuts for this, he knew, but he followed.
Why would they need to switch out cars? Were they moving the payload, aka Purple Hair Girl, aka Purple? Mayday.
Big ol' mayday.
Of course if they were moving her somewhere, for some reason, they might need a new car. Throw off the scent of coppers.
Or something like that.
Were the feds after them?
He was getting way too far ahead of himself and he took a few deep breaths, keeping his eyes on the back of Mr. Tattoo Sleeves who was far enough ahead of him that he wouldn't look like he was following. But then Chuck glanced around to make sure no one was watching him follow Mr. Tattoo Sleeves. And then he realized that looking around like that made him look super suspicious.
Idiot…
"Hey!"
Chuck jumped, raising his hands up by his head, making his fingers into crab claws and lifting one leg with his knee at his chest, his other knee bent slightly, ready to kick if he had to.
Captain Awesome just stared blankly at him for a moment, then snorted. "Is that a praying mantis, bro?"
Chuck dropped his arms to his sides and lowered his leg. "Shut up. I almost kicked you. Why you creeping up on me like that? I thought you were a bad guy."
Awesome made a face. "A bad guy? Are there bad guys just wandering around out here? Did I miss something?"
Wait. Shit. The Buy More Nerd Herd supervisor spun to look every which way. "Oh no. Nooo no no no no. Shit shit shit." He pushed past Awesome and jogged over to the last spot he'd seen Mr. Tattoo Sleeves. He looked down the alleys between buildings but didn't see him.
Awesome was hot on his heels. "Chuck, what the hell you doin'?" Excitement colored his handsome face then. "Was it a cat?"
Chuck's own features crumbled in his best What the hell? look.
"A cat? Huh?"
"Yeah. Did you see a cat? I saw one the other night when I was grabbing ice. So cute. An orange tabby. I wanted to scoop up the little critter and hug him." He paused, lifting a finger. "Or her," he chirped inclusively.
The younger of the two just shook his head slowly, in awe of the other man. "Captain Awesome, you're truly something, my dude. For reals."
"Thanks, bro." Awesome clapped him on the shoulder with no small amount of gravity. "No, but really…what're you doing over here? You looked kinda weird. All sneaky-weaky, creepy-weepy."
"I'm sorry? Doing what now?" Chuck gave the older man an amused look.
"Shut up. You look like you're following somebody or something."
Well there went his hope that he wasn't being obvious about following Mr. Tattoo Sleeves. He really needed to work on his sneaking game. Or maybe more like his chill game. That was it.
"Yeah, well. I was. Emphasis on the word was, 'cause he's gone now," he groused, looking over Awesome's shoulder. "Nowhere to be freaking found." Yet again…
Damn it, Chuck really couldn't catch a break with these people and his attempts to follow them.
"What? Who are you following and wh—Oh, crap. No. Did he drop his driver's license or a twenty buckaroo and you're trying to return it?" He looked legitimately upset as he spun to look over his shoulder. "We can split up, try to find 'im, give it to the lost and fou—"
"No, no. No, he didn't drop anything. Captain Awesome? I'm gonna need ya to be extra awesome right now, okay?" And he leaned in closer, raising his eyebrow.
"Yeah, bro. Totally." Devon leaned in as well, going full serious mode.
"The guy I was following…is a criminal."
"A criminal," Devon replied flatly.
"Yeah. Yeah, a criminal. Doin' the crime."
"…Why?" he asked in the same flat voice, his features unmoving.
"Because that's what criminals do. The crime."
"Why are you putting 'the' in front of—You know what? That's not important. I meant why do you think he's a criminal?" Devon asked, shaking himself and swiping his hand dismissively through the air.
Chuck straightened to his full height and blinked. "Oh. Right. Dude. Dude! You won't believe this. So I was just in the lobby asking for good trailheads and…" He remembered Carmichael Trailhead and almost blurted about it, but he stopped himself and instead decided he'd tell them later because otherwise he'd go off on a tangent. "I got this map," he continued, waggling the map. "But then I saw Mr. Tattoo Sleeves…"
"Is that some kind of punk version of Mr. Potato Head?"
Chuck ignored him. "And he was on the phone. Remember I told you that weird stuff that happened when I was in the garden a few days ago?" Devon shrugged. "The girl with her phone, holding it up like she was gonna record something or take a picture and that guy grabbing her phone? I was just following that guy. That's who I was following when you found me. I heard him say…get this…they're going to switch out their cars."
He switched his weight to his other foot, giving his sister's boyfriend a significant look.
"Ehhhh? Switch out…their cars," he repeated, because he really didn't get the reaction he wanted from the first time he said it.
"O…kaaaay?"
"Why do people normally switch out cars, Devon?"
The blonde narrowed his eyes. "They're gonna take a drive through rough terrain and they've only got a Prius?"
Chuck groaned and let his head fall back, just resisting making miserable whimpering sounds. "No. An actual reason."
"Okay, well, maybe their car broke down and they need a new one." Chuck made an agonized face. "What? Oh come on…" He huffed. "Okay fine. What's the reason you think they hafta switch out their cars, Chuckster?"
"Well, don't you always switch out the car when you commit a crime, are on the run, and need to hide from the feds?"
"I dunno, Chuck. Never committed a crime."
Fuckin' Boy Scout.
"You know what I mean."
"Why is that the first thing you go to? Plenty of reasons to need a new car. Cars break all the time. Especially if they went through one of those cheapy rental places?"
"Cheapy weapy?"
Devon laughed. "Come on, forget about that Billy Idol Mr. Potato Head guy and his new car or whatever and let's get inside. Ellie's making you a sandwich too."
Chuck nodded and trudged after the other man, wondering how in the hell he would ever be able to convince the FBI if he couldn't even convince his own family?
Damn it, things were super fishy—it had nothing to do with the ocean—and he needed to get to the bottom of it. Stat.
A/N: Fuck you, I'm on vacation!
-SC