A/N: *DC with hands on hips glaring at everyone* ISH! ISH! IIISSSSSHHHH! *SC shoves medicine in DC's mouth and drags him away*
Y'all, trust us. We have a really, really, really, really good plan. When have either of us ever done Charah dirty? In any of our stories? We got them. We got you. -SC
Disclaimer: We don't own anything, not this story, not the characters, and we're making no money from writing this fic.
Chuck was sitting in the SUV, in a really foul mood. Casey had asked him what he brought for stakeout music and Chuck retorted he didn't do that anymore because someone didn't like Michael Bolton. He saw her eyes cut to him in the backseat and for the first time in a long time he didn't sink from her glare right away. He held Sarah's eyes for long enough that she got the message. Eventually he looked away. A grunt from Casey made him look upfront and he saw a grin on Casey's face watching him in the rearview mirror. Sarah turned to look out the window, a scowl on her face.
The were now parked in front of the club, Casey doing something to his watch. "Okay, Chuck, our intel says Lou should be meeting Stavros behind the club."
"You guys are being paranoid," Chuck insisted. "There's no way Lou's showing up here."
"Now you're mic'ed," Casey said, handing Chuck the watch.
Great," Chuck groused. "Great, thanks a lot. And what will the sandwich police be doing on this stakeout?"
Neither answered, but Sarah sunk down in the seat. "Here we go. We got company."
Chuck looked on in shock as Lou pulled up. What was she doing here? Had he really been wrong about her? Was he really this bad of a judge of character?
"Believe us now?" Casey asked, a bit of "I told you so" in his voice.
"No," Chuck replied, pissed. "As a matter of fact, I don't." He got out of the SUV and followed Lou. He snuck around to the back and hid where he found Lou leaned up against Stavros's car as the smuggler emptied his trunk. He was carrying a shipping crate.
"Thank you, Stavros," Chuck heard Lou say.
"Oh, my pleasure," Stavros answered. He sat the crate down and walked back to her, leaning against the car. "So your friend, Chuck, where'd you meet him?"
"He works at the Buy More, across from the deli. I took my phone in to get it fixed. Why?"
He reached over and brushed her hair back from her face. "Just seems like a great guy. I'll be back with the rest."
Stavros left and Chuck came out of hiding. "Well, hello, Lou. If that is in fact your real name."
"Chuck, what are you doing here?" she asked.
"I think the question is what are you doing here?" He felt a righteous frustration, both at the fact that he was wrong about someone he'd thought was cool and nice, and at the fact that Sarah and Casey got to say "I told you so" about this.
"None of your business. Were you following me? Have you been spying on me?"
Chuck started to answer but remembered why he was there. "Hold on a second, don't try and turn this around on me. Okay, I'm not the one— I'm not the one smuggling…" He began to open the crate. "You know, what is this? What is this? Illegal, illegal things with my ex-boyfriend. " He opened the box and assorted meats fell out. "Is that— what is, what is that?"
"Portuguese cured soppressata," Lou answered. "What'd you think was going to be in there?"
"I, uh, I didn't quite know," Chuck answered, feeling foolish. He had listened to Sarah and Casey and he shouldn't have. The righteousness was gone and instead he was just angry. "I just saw you with Stavros and I suspected the worst."
"Right, well, congratulations, Chuck. Your suspicions have been confirmed. I'm a smuggler," Lou said, irritation filling her voice.
Chuck gulped. "You should probably keep that down. Someone'll hear you, okay?" He was covering his watch to try and protect her.
"I know it's illegal! There's no additives or preservatives in it," she yelled. Chuck slipped the watch off and dumped it in the glass behind him, praying it shorted out the mic. She was still going. "It takes ten days to clear customs and by then it's gone bad. Okay, don't get me started on the procedures and how much it costs me to do things legally!" He just stood there with her hands on her hips, glaring at him. When he didn't have anything to say to that, she huffed and began to gather up the meats.
"I'm sorry, Lou. I made a really big mistake," Chuck said.
Lou went up the stairs to the far door. "Looks like I did, too," she said and left.
The near door burst opened, Sarah entering with her gun drawn. "Hey, what happened?"
Chuck just looked at her, clenching his jaw. He was tired of this bullshit. Everything in his life felt like a secret or a lie, and he'd allowed it poison his mind against someone who was a good person, a meat smuggler, sure, but no arms dealer. "What happened? I'll tell you what happened. I let you two manipulate me into not trusting Lou and you were wrong. You were both wrong. And now I've lost yet another friend. A real friend. Someone normal." He huffed, throwing the lid to the crate on the ground with a loud clatter. "I blew it. Again."
"Yes, you did, Chuck," Stavros said, his gun pulled on them, coming in from behind them both. He had armed men with him and he was holding up the recording device. "You most definitely blew it."
}o{
"And here I thought you two made such a cute couple." Stavros smirked as he had his men open the trunk of his car. "A little mismatched, maybe." He grabbed Chuck by his collar and dragged him over to the car as Sarah struggled against the three men having to hold her back. "Though not nearly as mismatched as my Lou and that...small bearded freak."
"Hey, hey now! You leave him out of this," Chuck said over his shoulder as Stavros made him climb into the trunk. Sarah let her gaze linger on the interior of the trunk, looking for anything in there that might help them get out while she could actually see it. "What-What are you doing? Where are you taking us?" Chuck asked, looking over at her with a helpless look on his face as he was forced to lie down in the trunk.
She was then dragged over to the trunk as well. She struggled as much as she could, even bracing her boot on the bumper, but she wasn't strong enough to hold off three large men.
"You don't know who you're fucking with," she said through gritted teeth as she was finally forced down. There was no use trying to move once they were looking down at her and Chuck lying there helplessly. She felt the warmth of him at her back, and she took from it what calm she could as Stavros gave a mocking finger wave before he slammed the trunk shut, trapping them in the dark.
All she had was a dull, red light illuminating the interior. She supposed it was something. "Great. This is just great," she ground out through her teeth.
"Why did you follow me? I had things under control," he hissed. She felt his breath against her ear, his chest pressing into her back in these close quarters. But she had one knife Stavros's men weren't able to find in her fingers and she was wedging it in the trunk door to try to pry it open.
"Yeah. Apparently. We're in a really good situation right now, Chuck," she mocked.
"Oh, sarcasm? That's cute. That's real cute. If you two didn't immediately distrust Lou, we wouldn't have been at the docks in the first place."
"She was seen meeting with Stavros after she dropped Morgan off...handing. him. money. How are we not supposed to think that's incriminating? Huh?" She glanced over her shoulder at him, and she realized he was much closer than she'd thought. "Handing money to a smuggler?"
"It was meat! Stavros was bringing her meat!"
"I know that! But you had to run off by yourself and get captured—"
"Oh and you're so cool that you didn't also get captured. OH WAIT. YA DID."
She was going to elbow him in the face in two seconds. "Because. I. Was. Protecting. You. The feed cut off and I thought you'd been compromised."
"Oh so now I'm a traitor too?"
"I mean compromised in a different way! Stop being such an ass!"
"I wouldn't be such an ass if the stupid government didn't make me an ass!" he hissed. "I was never an ass before. Suddenly, I get a government computer in my brain and two mistrusting agent handlers and I become a big ol' ass! Funny how that happens!"
"Hilarious, now will you give me some damn room?" she snapped.
"No. I will not. Only because there is no more room." He was such a child. The way he'd just said that as if she was stupid and he was explaining something to a misbehaving four year old.
Sarah sought to just ignore him, trying to jam the knife into the trunk lock from the inside this time. She at least was able to tear some of the cloth away and get to the lock.
"So I assume you have a plan to get us out of this mess?"
"Yes!" she snapped. "Right now, Casey is tracking us through a GPS device we had installed on your watch. A SWAT team will be here any minute." A long few moments of silence followed that and she had a bad feeling about that. With how Chuck was usually such a motormouth and everything. "What? What did you do?" she asked, glancing over her shoulder at him again.
His features hardened in the dim red light. "Yeah, um, about the watch…"
She shifted her body so that her whole side was leaning against his front so that she could get a better look at him. "What?" She fixed wide eyes on him.
"I sort of...Ahem. Well, Lou started confessing to the meat smuggling and she was giving a lot of details and she's my friend still, ya know? I did her dirty not trusting her and I felt like I needed to protect her from the CIA fudging up her business...her life…"
"Chuck…?"
"I took it off and dropped it in a glass of iced coffee so you wouldn't hear what she was saying," he rushed out in one breath.
She slowly turned to fix him with a glare. "You. Did. WHAT?!"
"I was protecting her! So sue me!"
"Sue you? Holy fuck, Chuck Bartowski. We get out of here alive and I'll do way more than sue you! How stupid could you be?"
"Oh, excuse me? You're the one who thought a meat smuggler was involved with an arms deal, Agent Walker! You two are supposed to be the government agents around here, aren't you? All this experience and you made a pretty big miscalculation," he sniveled.
"Only miscalculation I made was in thinking you weren't a big stupid jerk!" she clipped in a low voice. She was spitting mad now. "Emphasis on the stupid part. You taking that watch off really takes the cake, you know that? The only thing that could've probably saved us from this fucking mess."
"Lou was incriminating herself and I didn't want her getting into trouble."
"You put yourself in serious danger for some girl you've only known a few days."
"Jealous?"
He'd hit a definite trigger spot and he most likely didn't even realize it. She felt her jaw twitch as she flipped over onto her other side, their fronts pressed close together, faces only an inch apart. "Jealous?" She let out a mocking laugh. "Oh, come on. What you did was foolish! Did you really think the CIA would give a flying fuck about a deli meat smuggler?"
She saw something flash in his eyes in the low light. And his chest puffed out against hers. "Well, excuse me if I'm not Mr. Perfect Spy. We can't all be Bryce Larkin now, can we?"
How in the hell had Bryce come into play here? It washed over her like a warm blanket of satisfaction and validation and she smirked, her eyes bright. "Who's jealous now, huh?"
He clenched his jaw. She'd hit a nerve. Big time. "You're being childish," he snapped.
"You're childish! And your antics got us locked in an arms dealer's trunk and once again I'm gonna have to save both our asses."
"Oh, that's nice. That's great. You can quit any time you want to. You know that?"
Sarah raised her eyes to his and leaned so close their noses were almost brushing. She could feel his breath against her lips but she wasn't thinking about that. Or the way heat was spilling out from her collar and reddening her cheeks. "Said everything you wanna say?"
"More or less," he snarked.
"Good. Now shut. up. You're sucking up all the air," she snarled, their noses bumping. He looked struck dumb, like he couldn't find anything else to say. Thank God. She flipped over back onto her other side and scooted back into his body a little harder than was necessary so that she had more room to fiddle with the lock with her knife.
What must've been maybe ten minutes passed, the air in the trunk feeling thinner, even though their argument ended. She could still feel the tension, the heat, and she still wanted to crack her elbow into the jerk's chin for his wise-ass cracks.
But then she felt the car slowing. "We're here," she murmured, setting aside the antipathy between them for a moment. Survival had to take precedence here. "Wherever here is."
Chuck didn't respond. He was probably giving her the silent treatment now. Like a baby.
There was the sound of car doors opening, shutting, and then the trunk flew open and Stavros and Yari were both standing above them, looking down with similar smirks on their faces.
"Ah, yes. Welcome to our turf, my friends," Yari murmured in a faux friendly tone. "Get them out," he said then to his men, hardness in his voice and features. He and Stavros scooted out of the way as Sarah was bodily lifted out of the trunk by three men again, even as she thrashed against them. She was slammed down onto a chair and tied to it by her wrists and ankles. She could already feel how inexpertly they'd tied her up, and her knife was clutched between her fingers in no time at all, sawing away at her bindings on her wrist.
Chuck was unceremoniously shoved into a chair two feet to the right of hers, tied up similarly to her.
"Cozy?" Yari asked, grinning. Neither of them responded. "I only ask because it isn't very often we get to play host here, is it boys?"
"Hard to believe someone who locks people in trunks doesn't typically play kidnapper," Sarah said, needing to keep this conversation going for as long as it took to get herself out of these bindings. What she'd do once she was free, though, she had no idea.
"Well. You seem to have me pegged." He widened his eyes and walked up to Chuck. "Her, I get. She's ice cold. Typical federal agent brat. But you? I don't get you."
"Yeah, I'm hard to peg," Chuck said in a bit of an Eastwood growl, narrowing his eyes.
"I peg him for an idiot," Stavros said with a shrug.
"Hey! That's not nice." Chuck looked over Yari's shoulder and glared at the younger Demetrios. "In spite of you actively ruining my best friend's date, I didn't say anything nasty about you, Stavros!"
Chuck Bartowski's antics were usually either a little cute or at least tolerable, his defense mechanism usually consisting of breathless rambling and confusing pop culture references. But at the moment, she found it insufferable. "Do you ever tire of hearing your own voice?" she asked, cutting off any response Stavros might've made.
All three of them turned to give her a surprised look.
"Oh, excuse me. I don't have years of experience dealing with high pressure situations like you do. Stony silence isn't really my thing."
"Yeah? You should try it sometime maybe."
"Maybe you try to take the stick out of your ass."
"I will! And then I'll proceed to beat you with it."
"Oh, that's nice. That's reeeeeeeeal nice. Really professional."
"Enough!" Yari snapped, and both of them spun to look at him again. Thanks to Chuck being easy to goad, she was almost through the rope binding her wrists. Granted, he said some things she was going to smack him for later, the ass. "You are both unprofessional."
He moved over to a table piled with tools and picked up a drill, eyeing it for a few seconds, turning it and letting her and Chuck look at it for long enough to freak out probably. She wasn't freaking out, but Chuck likely would...but also...shit.
"Time is of the essence so let me just cut to the chase," he said finally, turning to face them and strolling the long way around to stand back in front of them. God, her fingers were sweating and it was getting harder to slice the rope. "There is a very important package we are delivering, and in a few minutes it's getting picked up. I want to know who else knows about it. And I think I can get you to tell me."
Chuck looked to her with wide eyes, fear in his face. She gave a small shake of her head. She could get them out of this, but he couldn't tell Yari Demetrios they were CIA. He couldn't tell them who he was, or why he was connected to the CIA. They couldn't know anything.
But all Yari had to do was pull the trigger on the drill a few times, that horrible, shiver-inducing sound filling the room, and Chuck broke.
"Okay, okay! I'll talk! I'll talk."
"Chuck! No!" she snapped. Was he crazy? How could she signal to him that she had this in the bag without their captors figuring out that she nearly had her bindings cut?
"We know...all about the...imported salami," he rushed out, and God, this guy really loved pulling stuff out of his ass on the fly in harrowing situations, didn't he? What in the hell was he up to? She eyed Yari and Stavros to gauge their reactions. "And-And we're cool with it, man! We're so cool with it. Who doesn't love a good hard salami? Sexual innuendo aside, am I right? Heh. Hehe." Jesus Christ, she was going to die. This was really how she was going to die. "Really, I mean, the real crime...is that it is a crime. Know what I'm saying? Why keep people from their meats? What do we have to gain from that? There's no need for torture, Yari," he finished in a rush, cutting to the chase and swallowing thickly.
Yari just stared him down, amusement in his face. And then he turned to look back at his smirking son, before placing his attention back on Chuck and chuckling.
"Mr. Bartowski...I'm not going to torture you…"
"Oh, oh great. That's great. Thank you. See? I knew you were good guys, huh?" He turned to look at Sarah. "Didn't I tell you they—? Great. We're on the same page."
"I'm going to torture her." Yari immediately turned the drill towards her and swung it close to her face. She gulped, but met his gaze solidly, not flinching a bit. Bastard.
"No, nononono! No! We're not on the same page anymore, Yari!" Chuck yelled, struggling against his bindings. She wanted to look at Chuck, maybe reassure him, but she just stared Yari down, narrowing her eyes. Mother fucker, just try it… "We're not even in the same chapter!" Chuck yelled louder, his voice getting higher pitched as Yari activated the drill. God, the sound was truly terrifying. It sent chills through her. This definitely wasn't how she wanted to die.
Yari handed his drill off to another member of his team and she inwardly smirked. Big bad arms smuggler couldn't even do his own torturing. He had to dole it out to one of his lackeys. But then she dropped her gaze, squirming in her chair as the other man held the drill close to her face and her whole head was filled with that awful sound.
"No, no, y-y-you killed a whole family outside of Yerevan!" The drill stopped and Sarah let out a relieved sigh, turning to fix Chuck with her quintessential did you just flash? look. "You stole their heirlooms, and you sold all of them on the Russian black market… except for that watch!" Chuck continued.
The man looked down at his watch, then back up at Chuck, confusion and mostly suspicion in his face. "How do you know that?" he demanded.
Chuck made a desperate sound and turned to the other gunman standing a few feet off to the side of the goon with the drill. "And you! Your name is Vladimir Snell!" The man's eyes narrowed. "Last year, you were paid forty thousand dollars to kill a man named Leo Koloff."
The first man froze, turning his head slowly to look at Snell. "You told me we were paid twenty thousand."
As pissed as she was at him, she had to admit...now that she knew Chuck was using the Intersect to set these two at each other's throats, she was in awe. It was quick thinking, but also… Was he finding a way to almost control his flashes? Was he learning how to properly use the information in the Intersect for situations like this? That was...stunning.
"He's lying!" Snell snapped. "He'll say anything to keep from being tortured!"
"How he know about Yerevan?" the first man asked then, thrusting his free hand inside of his jacket. "He knows everything! And you…? You owe me money…"
Things were going to get bad. She could feel the tension mounting. So she hurried up with cutting her bindings, then knocked her heel against the leg of her chair, making a blade jut out from the toe of her boot.
The first man pulled a gun from inside his jacket and pointed it at Snell, and there was a sudden gunshot, Snell going down in a cloud of red.
Yari stood behind them all, his own gun smoking. "Well! That settles that."
Sarah glanced down at the dead man, the blood pooling beneath him. He wasn't wrong about that, she thought to herself with a chill. But Yari seemed to be in a hurry now and that meant her time was almost up.
"So…" He wasn't playing games with the drill anymore. He simply pressed his gun to her temple, still hot enough that it made her wince when it touched her skin. "If you will kindly tell me who else knows about our shipment…" She met his gaze again, eyes hard. She could feel Chuck's eyes on the side of her face, and she could see his head turned towards her in her peripheral.
"The package is here," a man announced from the back. Yari pulled the gun back from her head and turned to look. A guy who looked more apt to work for the Nerd Herd rather than an arms smuggler stood there holding a tablet with a countdown clock on it. What in the hell kind of package had a countdown clock? "Berth 19. We've got five minutes 'til it expires, Sir."
Expires? Fuck…
"All right." Yari didn't seem too broken up when he turned back and shrugged. "We'll just have to kill them."
Sarah could feel the pull of the rope. She was almost out. Just a little more give and she could snap the bindings. Chuck turned to look at her then, though.
"S—There's a bomb. A weapon in the shipment, and it's a bomb. Some kind of chemical bomb," he said, just barely keeping himself from saying her name. "We have to get to it before it blows."
Oh God damn, that was just about the last thing she needed. The last thing Southern California needed. But as she looked at Chuck, eyes wide, she also caught some movement down the row of boxes behind them, a tall Godsend slowly slinking through the shadows towards them.
Casey…
She waited for him to get just close enough, meeting his gaze, that silent conversation they were so good at, and she sliced the ropes around her ankle with a quick and hard flick of her foot, the blade at her toe doing it's job. And just like that, she swung that same foot up and stabbed the first gunman closest to her in his gut, startling him.
There was a blast of a gunshot behind Chuck's shoulder and another gunman hit the deck. She knew Casey had read the look she gave him loud and clear.
Sarah swung her leg around again as she stood and stabbed the gunman in the shoulder with the toe blade this time, sending him to the ground. Chuck was still bound and in the line of fire, she realized, so she placed her boot on his chair and shoved him, sending the chair rolling out of the way. She followed him, ducking down low as she ran, and the gunfire started in earnest.
She felt a bullet whiz past her as she dove down next to Chuck and cut the ropes around his ankles and wrists.
"I'll hold the fort! Go!" Casey ordered and she didn't have to be told twice as she grabbed Chuck and pulled him along with her, out of harm's way, away from the battle. Casey would be just fine. Chuck and the bomb were more important.
As they sprinted out into the dockyard, she led him away from the warehouse, the sounds of gunshots still audible behind them. "Okay, the bomb's at Berth 19," she said, staggering to a stop and grabbing his arm. "Chuck, I want you to get as far away from here as possible."
"No, I'm coming with you."
Was he seriously doing this to her? "You are not coming with me! You're not going anywhere near a live bomb!"
He got in her face and she straightened her spine, standing as tall as she could, clenching her jaw and glaring up at him. "Do you know how to defuse a bomb? Huh, Miss Smarty Pants? Miss Best-All-Around? No! 'Cause you don't have an Intersect in your head! I do!" He dashed away from her then, and she was too caught up in the angry look he'd had on his face to realize it until it was too late to pull him back.
"Hey! Chuck, wait!" God damn him. Damn him to hell. She hated him. She hated him she hated him she hated him. And she felt angry tears start to gather in her eyes as she broke into a sprint to catch him. "You are crazy!" she screamed as she ran.
"I know!" he yelled back.
How did he even know where Berth 19 was? She didn't know. All she knew was she had to get there. Because apparently she wasn't going to succeed in getting Chuck to leave.
"Do you know where you're going?" she asked.
"Yeah! Yeah, this!" He pointed to his head as he skidded around a corner and kept running. She followed after him. "You wouldn't even be able to find the bomb without me!"
She could smack him. She really could. "Now isn't the time for this, Chuck!" she snapped.
It must've taken them over two minutes, sprinting through berths, and she had to trust Chuck had seen the schematics of the docks in his head somehow. Otherwise, a lot of people would die.
"Berth 19! Here, here!" he burst out, turning into a large warehouse building and sliding to a halt.
A large wooden crate the size of a public college dorm room stood in the middle of the building. That was it. That had to be it.
She rushed over to grab a nearby crowbar and tossed it to him with a "here", and took one for herself. "Help me out," she said, refraining from saying anything else snarky. It was all business now. They had lives to save.
They both ran to the crate and worked at prying it open, and when the wooden face of the crate fell open with a loud clatter, the air left her lungs altogether. That was absolutely a bomb, a big bomb, and it was taking out a hell of a lot of people if it went off, she decided as she slowly moved around to stand in front of it.
There was less than a minute left on the countdown. Letting out a rough breath, she hurried to the mechanisms of the bomb and oh so carefully removed the plate in front of it, lowering it down and looking at the mess of wires inside. Shit, she couldn't figure this out. All of her training considering, there was no way she knew what kind of bomb this was. And she especially didn't know how to defuse it.
"C'mon, Intersect," she heard Chuck breathe to himself. "Show me how to do this…"
She'd nearly forgotten about that in her panic. And she spun to look at him with forty-five seconds on the clock. "Did you flash?" she asked, not bothering to keep the desperation out of her voice.
"No...nothing."
That was it then. She turned back to try to peer inside, but it was too dark in here to be able to even see what she was doing if she tried to defuse this.
"Come on!" she heard him say. "Come on come on come on, baby, don't fail me now!"
But it had. And she couldn't let him stay here. She turned. "Okay, Chuck. That's enough. Run. I'm gonna stay and try to defuse it." She turned back, feeling a bubble rise in her chest as she wracked her brain for something, anything. Knowing there was nothing. But at least Chuck could get far away from here. Far...ish.
"No, I'm not leaving you here."
She shut her eyes tightly, then spun around, fury in her face. "Go! That's an order!"
His features hardened and he stood up straighter. Damn it, she recognized this. His spine was made of steel and he wasn't going anywhere. Damn it, Chuck. Damn it!
"No!" he snapped, stepping even closer. Stubborn idiot. Stubborn brave idiot. She hated this assignment. She hated how often it had made her question herself. She hated how often it had made her stop and think about...everything. And she hated how often he made her think about things she'd never thought about before. She hated him at the moment. She hated his tall, lanky frame just standing there, courage pouring out of him...just a regular guy who worked at a Buy More making eleven dollars an hour. Who, just a few months ago, had no real goals outside of clocking in on time and beating video games or something. And here he was staring down a bomb, refusing to leave her alone. And she hated him for what it was doing to her insides.
She didn't want him to die.
She didn't like the idea of the world without Chuck Bartowski in it. It'd be a dull, grey world. A world that wasn't as kind. Or as...good. Granted, she was dying with him. So she wouldn't have to see that broken Chuckless world.
She acted without thinking, her anger and hatred at this whole situation taking the reins, and she grabbed the gun she'd picked up off the ground on her way out of Demetrios's warehouse. She cocked it and pointed it at Chuck's forehead. "I. Said. Go," she snarled.
Maybe she was a little desperate. Maybe she needed to know she'd done everything she could to protect him in the end.
"Oh. Okay, I see. You're gonna shoot me to prevent me from being blown up! That's a great plan!"
"Why are you so stubborn?" she demanded, hearing the soul-deep anguish in her own voice, not very well disguised by the anger.
"I don't know!" he yelled as she tucked her gun in her pants at her lower back. "I'd actually consider this a rare moment of courage! I don't know where it's comin' from, maybe you just bring out the worst in me!"
She knew where it was coming from, because it wasn't rare at all. And damn him. Damn him for saying something like that when they only had maybe twenty seconds left to live. "And you in me!" she snapped, moving closer to him, face to face. Or they would be face to face if he wasn't so tall.
They met gazes and the bomb started making some extremely concerning sounds that caused her to look at it. Ten seconds. Jesus. This was it. She could feel Chuck's eyes burning into the side of her face. What could she do? What could she say?
She had to say something.
She turned back to look at him, just barely holding in a sob of fear. He'd changed things, hadn't he? He'd changed a lot. Fitting that this man was the crux of her last mission. Someone who brought change with him wherever he went.
But before she could...she didn't even know what...thank him? No. Tell him he was a good person? No. Curse him for being the way he was when so few people deserved his kindness? Especially not… Chuck filled the terrified, empty space with words of his own.
In prime Chuck Bartowski fashion, he breathed, "Well, it was nice knowin' ya."
There was no fear in him for a moment...It was something else. She didn't know what… But she felt it too, whatever it was.
She didn't know how much time was left but as he shut his eyes in preparation to die, she let herself act and she grabbed his face in a hungry grip and yanked him down for a kiss, lifting herself up onto her tiptoes.
It was supposed to be her last act on Earth, to really taste him, know what it felt like to have a man like that press his lips against hers. But the moment his surprise melted and his arm slung around her to pull her closer, his hand that was so unbelievably warm cupping her face, it was like something inside of her was triggered.
A numbing electricity shot through her, filling her limbs, shooting from the ends of her fingers and toes. And she grabbed at him, slinging a hand over the back of his neck and pulling him closer, her other hand twisting in the front of his shirt.
He cupped her face in both hands then, moving his lips against hers, and she couldn't help the soft sigh. As his teeth bumped hers, she let go of his head and grabbed his shirt with both hands, yanking him even closer. It was as if they were of the same mind, as he rounded her waist with one arm and pulled her close, too. She gasped, lifting her foot from the ground to almost catch herself against him, hooking her boot around his calf and arching herself into him.
The electricity turned to fire as Chuck grabbed her by her upper back in a wanton, hungry, and still protective grip, opening his mouth against hers so that their tongues could meet. She'd never felt this before. It was like something was possessing her, had her in its hold, and refused to relinquish her from its grip.
She was losing herself in this.
And suddenly, as she tilted her head and swiped her tongue over his, she realized...very belatedly...that Chuck was starting to freeze against her, under her touch. Not go cold, but just...stop. Shit.
Oh, shit.
She wasn't dead and shit. Shit shit shit.
Oh so slowly, she angled her chin away from him, their lips coming apart with a light smack. She carefully opened her eyes and felt an almost heady sense of...Panic? Heat? Heat and panic?...flood through her. And she looked up into his heated gaze, his surprised gaze...with absolute… God, she was just as startled as he was, wasn't she? Oh God… Shit.
And she realized she had Chuck's shirt in a vice grip like she was afraid he'd go away. It was desperate, needy… She'd never done that… nothing in her life required desperate or needy.
And then Chuck gently took his large hands from her back and cupped her elbows, letting her lower herself down from her tip toes. And she felt the rush of cool air assail her body as she pulled a few inches back.
She felt...sheepish. Or a word that meant the same thing as sheepish, but way more intense and powerful. Like she wanted to just sink into the ground and disappear forever. And also remember the feelings, the sensations for just as long.
}o{
"Well, it was nice knowin' ya." What the hell, Chuck? What the actual hell, you're about to die and….what? She had yanked him down, her lips attached to his. Sarah fucking Walker was kissing him. He was about to die, and she was kissing him. To hell with what was a good idea in this situation. They were about to die and she. was. kissing. him. He slung an arm around her to pull her in and he felt like his body would explode instead of the bomb.
She grabbed his shirt, swung her arm around his neck and pulled him in. His back felt like electricity was pulsating through him where she touched him. He was wild with desire. Sarah. Fucking. Walker. She was kissing him. God, why did he have to die?
He cupped her face, he had to feel her face, she had to know how he felt. It wasn't that she was just beautiful, both inside and out. It wasn't that she was so funny, and she didn't mind him being a nerd. It wasn't that she laughed at his jokes and he could just be with her. No, she had his heart, and his soul in her hands. Sarah Walker was kissing him and she was going to know she was loved as she left this mortal coil.
And then he opened his mouth, her tongue swept over his, and if there was a fire before, it was a raging inferno now. He could get lost forever in her and not care. God, why die now? Why...why were they not dead? He knew he shouldn't stop. But he realized something. The bomb should have gone off by now. Why hadn't it? He stopped, she hadn't, and now, she must have realized. She had told him that acting on this thing between them wasn't wise. He had told her earlier she could quit anytime, but he was angry and hadn't meant that. He gently removed his hands from her back, cupping her elbows and letting her lower herself. Shit. Sarah Walker had kissed him. The woman he had tried to tell himself he didn't love, kissed him. Not just kissed him, but kissed him like he had never been kissed in his life. And he wasn't sure there was one damn thing he could do about it.
}o{
Sarah didn't know what he saw in her face, if it was regret or shame or what she felt underneath that—an enduring and startling fiery desire to do what they just did again and hang the consequences. But she was a good spy, a good agent, and she took his safety seriously. She couldn't do what she just did again. She'd thought that was going to be her last few seconds of life, damn it.
And now they stood here, staring at one another, neither of them seeming to know what to do about this. Because if you stripped away all of the extra stuff—the handler/asset business, the complications, the bomb that didn't go off after all, and the way they'd been at one another's throats all night—she and Chuck had just kissed one another to within an inch of their lives. Literally, she supposed. Since they'd thought they were going to die.
What was she supposed to do with this? With the way he still cupped her elbows so gently, her feet practically on top of his, they were still so close.
She finally took a bit of a step back and Chuck dropped his hands to his sides. Still just...quietly watching her. Still looking as startled as she felt.
"The hell happened?"
They both jumped, but she recovered first, turning to face Casey as he hurried into Berth 19, his gun drawn. He lowered it cautiously upon seeing it was just them.
"W-Where do we even start?" Chuck asked.
Sarah fought so hard to keep from looking at him at that, the way he sounded breathless. There was so much more meaning to what he said, and she knew inherently he wanted her to hear it. Where, indeed?
"The bomb counted down to zero and then...nothing happened," she said, able to keep her own voice steady. Everything happened.
"What do ya mean, nothing happened?" Casey asked, holstering his gun, looking confused.
"Well, we're all still standing here. What do you think? It didn't explode!" she snapped, and she really had to reel herself in a bit because she was losing her footing. She was feeling vulnerable, exposed, raw, and she needed to get away from people. All of them.
"Jesus, Walker. I forgive ya 'cause I'm sure you're all shaken up after nearly bein' blown to radioactive bits. Why don't you two hit the road, get the kid home? I've got my team here. We'll figure out the situation with this bomb."
There was something about the way Casey was looking at Chuck, and then at her, and back to Chuck. And for a moment, she thought he somehow had guessed—maybe one of them had a guilty look when he came in—or worse, he saw them kissing. But then he slowly walked up to Chuck and thumped him on the back, squeezing his shoulder. "You okay, Bartowski? Here." He went into his pocket and pulled out...a cigar?
Chuck furrowed his brow and quietly took it from him. "Uh. Thank you."
"It's right outta Cuba. Don't ask questions." He winked. "Sit out on the patio with some whiskey and that ol' guy and you'll sleep like a baby. Near death experience'll be in the rearview mirror. You don't even gotta wave at it." He thumped him on the back again. "Walker…?"
"I'm fine. I-I don't need a cigar. Thanks."
He snorted in amusement. "I'll keep ya updated." Then he gestured to a few of his team members and took his phone out to call Beckman, no doubt, before starting to get the scene cleaned up. She didn't know if Stavros and Yari Demetrios were dead. She didn't care. She just had to get out of here.
And apparently, Chuck and his Cuban cigar were coming with her.
}o{
She'd freaked out getting behind the steering wheel, trapping herself in a moving box on wheels, in such a small space, with him after what they'd just done to one another. Not just because there was some weird sort of static electricity or magnetism or...she didn't know what...still floating there between them. But because she knew Chuck well enough now a little over two months to know he had to talk things out.
He had this habit of showing up at her door, sweeping into her life again when she least expected it and just laying everything out, sincerely and candidly, and it always left her reeling.
But nothing had left her reeling quite like the way he'd held onto her and kissed her like...well, like it was his last act on Earth and he wanted to make it count. More than that, the way she'd held onto him and kissed him back.
Who was she kidding? She'd kissed him. She'd been the one to pull him in. He'd closed his eyes and she'd grabbed him and kissed him. Why why why why why had she done that? She knew why and she didn't.
Either way, Chuck surprised her again. Because he didn't say anything on the ride back to his apartment complex. The full forty-five minutes of on and off again traffic, he'd just sat there. Except for when he asked if it was okay for him to turn the heater on. She was so trapped in her own head, feeling like someone had come and pulled back the veneer of hard spy and left her defenseless, that she didn't notice until he asked that he had no jacket and was shivering.
She finally pulled up to the curb outside of his complex and they just sat there, the car running, the heater running, both of them facing forward. She had a million and one reasons to say goodnight, a hint in her tone so that he understood that meant he could get out and go inside. It was preferable. He'd get out, she'd wait for him to go inside safely, and she speed back to her place like a bat out of hell so that she could lock herself up, hide under the covers...think. Or just drown herself in a shower and not think. If she was feeling desperate enough, maybe a sleeping pill.
But Chuck was wringing his hands in his lap, and she suddenly realized that their kiss wasn't the only thing that had happened tonight. They'd both been so sure that bomb would explode, that they would die. And it didn't matter how often near death experiences happened, it never got much easier. You just learned how… to deal with it. Chuck had been ready to die. And he was alive. Sitting here. Instead. She couldn't imagine the shit that was going through his head.
And she couldn't just let him get out without making sure he was okay.
She felt an underlying anger—at what or whom, she didn't know—maybe because she hated being vulnerable and nothing had made her feel this vulnerable in a long, long time. She had that icky feeling she used to get all the time, sometimes around Bryce even...that feeling like you just wanted to be holed up by yourself with no one else around, hide from the world. She hadn't gotten that feeling as often here, in Burbank. But she had it now.
And yet...she couldn't be unfeeling towards him. He didn't function that way. He wouldn't do that to her. And he deserved better anyway. So she turned off the car. "Ready to go in?"
"Oh. Uh...Yeah. Yeah, I am. Thanks. For the heater, I mean. Should'a brought a jacket."
She offered a small smile and got out of the car. He waited for her to walk around to his side, a quietude about him that should've left her feeling so uncomfortable because it was so unlike him. But there was more of a...camaraderie to it. It almost put her at ease. Because at least he was as rocked by the kiss as she was. She was afraid of what he was thinking. If it was anything like what she was thinking, they were in some significant trouble, and she wasn't a fool...she knew he had feelings. So it was safe to say, they were in some significant trouble.
Even Chuck Bartowski—the...well, chattiest guy she'd ever met in her life without it being downright annoying or entitled—was struck silent by what had happened. And all she could think was Thank God.
She thought as they passed through the gate about the cover and very lightly slipped her hand into his. His fingers twitched in hers, and she thought he must've understood because he just barely squeezed to make it look more authentic.
And then they got to the door and she felt terror go through her. She hadn't even thought about Ellie or Devon, or maybe even Morgan if he'd snuck in through Chuck's window again. God, when they walked through this door, everyone would be so sweet and warm. Ellie would ask if she wanted to stay for coffee and had she eaten, they had leftovers. It would make her uncomfortable, and Chuck as well. Or worse, they'd notice things were...tense between the two of them. They wouldn't know why but they'd assume something was wrong, or maybe they'd had a fight. Ellie would corner Chuck later to make sure he was okay, to make sure they were okay. Or she'd call Sarah on the phone and she'd have to guess on a lie that might match Chuck's.
But they stopped, and Chuck didn't take out his keys to open the door like he normally did. Instead he dropped her hand and turned to face her. She just intrinsically understood the look on his face. He'd come to the same conclusion and he was letting her say goodnight here, before all of the familial awkwardness inside could happen. And she couldn't help thinking bless this emotionally intelligent man.
He glanced over his shoulder at the door and cleared his throat. And before he could say goodnight and disappear, she noticed the way the pupils in his eyes quivered. He looked shaken up under the startled remnants from the kiss.
"Hey," she said quietly, moving in as close as she dared and peered up into his eyes through her eyelashes. "Are you gonna be okay?"
Chuck seemed to know what she meant and he smiled a little and nodded. "Well, I'm alive. Which is more than I thought I'd be, like…" He glanced at his wrist that didn't have the watch anymore and winced. "Oh. Right." He snorted. "Well, an hourish ago."
She smiled back and nodded. "Okay. Good."
And then she took a step back and nodded again. "Night, Chuck."
"Night," he breathed, his eyes so soft it was freaking stupid, honestly. There was so much comfort there, comfort she felt it was unsafe to seek, even if she maybe needed it. She was rollercoastering between that need to be alone and a need to be reassured that what had happened earlier wasn't the end of everything, that she hadn't completely fucked up.
And when she turned to walk away, she felt his fingers suddenly curl around hers and hold tight. He didn't pull her back or yank her into him for another kiss. Though she hadn't thought he was going to do that for even a second. But she was still confused as she slowly turned to look at him over her shoulder, letting him hang onto her hand.
"Sarah, thank you."
It could've been for anything. She wasn't sure what. And she didn't want to ask. She'd let him have whatever he needed from thanking her, without ruining it with a stupid question. She nodded.
But when he let go of her hand, she didn't leave. She didn't run like most of her brain was screaming at her to do.
She closed the distance between them and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, hugging him. It was a tight, quick hug. And his arms went around her torso almost immediately, squeezing her back. She felt that camaraderie again, that feeling of knowing she wasn't alone. And that icky wanting to be alone feeling faded. Instead she wanted to go inside with him and sit in his rickety computer chair, watching him play one of his games. Or sit at the table drinking coffee with Ellie. Watching Devon kill himself on that stationary bike while calling out weird aerobics-sounding things to no one in particular and then laughing when Ellie rolled her eyes.
But she walked away from him, leaving the courtyard altogether, and getting in her car.
She didn't think this was the end of everything. She didn't think she'd completely fucked up.
But as she turned on the car to go back to her place, she thought maybe she'd fucked up a little. She groaned and shook her head.
}o{
He made sure he had on warm clothes, waited fifteen minutes after she had left, exited the apartment and drove off. His life had changed tonight. First, he had nearly died. Well, he hadn't, but he hadn't known that at the time and then….and then IT had happened. He didn't know what was going to happen between them now, but now he knew something….something he thought he had known before, and if he did, he could ignore it then. Now...now it was too big to ignore. He loved Sarah Walker, and while that revelation was huge in and of itself, the next revelation was even bigger. She felt something for him.
It was possible his lips were convenient. It was possible she swore to herself that she wouldn't die alone. It was possible a bomb going off added a lot more oomph to her kiss. But her grabbing his shirt like he was a life preserver and she was about to drown...that was…something.
He made it to his destination and sat down on the sand. He watched the waves crash in as the moonlight played on the water. Trust me, Chuck. He watched the stars twinkle in the sky. You weren't in the wrong when you tried to act on it. He watched birds swoop down and heard them call out. I never heard the words she didn't like or want you. Be gentle with her Chuckles. Sarah Walker was a human being. Sarah Walker had feelings. She had feelings for Chuck. That was huge, and as huge as it was, it was so fucked up. Because that meant she couldn't act on them. She couldn't see where they could go from here, because if she did...she'd be gone. The sky became gray as the first rays of the morning broke through.
He pulled out his cell phone and called the Buy More telling them he wouldn't be in this morning. He couldn't. It was too much. He couldn't deal with Jeffster. He couldn't deal with Morgan and who knew if Anna would pick today to finally kill him. He couldn't deal with Big Mike, and he damn sure couldn't deal with Casey. He leaned back and groaned. Casey was going to realize something, but if they asked he would just say it was the anniversary of the day he met Jill and he just needed the day.
He hoped nothing happened at the cleanup because an assignment was straight up impossible today. He loved Sarah Walker and she had feelings for him. He wasn't sure the Intersect could currently work with that information running around in his head. He was going to have to get it together at some point. They had to work together. Bryce had seen to that. The son of a bitch. It was a shame he wasn't alive so Chuck could punch him in his pretty boy face. Knowing Sarah Walker had feelings for him was the greatest thing in the world and the worst thing in the world. He lowered his head, his arms wrapped around his knees. He sat there, by himself, trying to figure just what he was going to do.
A/N: HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY (fireworks) Bwahahahahahahahahahaha.
Please review. Thanks.
-SC and DC