Castle in the Air

By Steampunk . Chuckster

Summary: Sarah has opened her dream bookstore just before the holiday season, but when a corporate monopoly announces their reduced-price brick-and-mortar is going in a block away, she must band together with her fellow small businesses to fight for their lives, even if it means getting past a slew of bad first impressions to work with Chuck, the owner of the comic book shop next door. AU Charah.

A/N: Happy New Year, everybody. Genuinely hope your 2024 is leagues better than your 2023 was. I hope it's a good one for y'all. Take care of yourselves. Drink plenty of water, get some exercise. Look after your minds and your hearts.

Disclaimer: I don't own Chuck or its characters, and any similarities in this fic to any corporate entities are just coincidence... shh.

Chuck had barely rolled out of bed on his day off when he got a text from Martha telling him to turn on his TV and change it to a certain local network station.

Still pulling a T-shirt down over his bare torso to go with the boxers he typically went to sleep wearing, he flicked on his big screen TV. The sound of the TV blaring to life blocked the sound of waves crashing on Venice Beach outside of his beach house balcony doors. He'd left them cracked a little to get fresh air in after the place being closed up for multiple days while he'd been staying at his main residence, his apartment in Los Angeles proper.

Plopping onto his leather couch, he ruffled his hair and turned to the channel she told him about, unsure of what he was about to see.

There was the familiar warehouse, the same one into which Cadabra would be moving their brick-and-mortar retail store. And there was a podium in front of it.

"We'd like to invite Southern California Operational Manager for Cadabra, Lenny Waters, up here to tell you a little bit about what you can expect from a Cadabra retail store in this community."

Chuck groaned. "Heavier traffic?" he grumbled. "The small business death knell? Fuckers…"

He texted Martha back: "Why are you putting me through this torture? And WTF why didn't we know this press conference was happening? We could've invaded it with fart noise machines! Pbbbbttttttttthhh!" That was the best way he knew to type out a fart sound. She had a husband and a son; fart stuff was probably part of her daily life.

She didn't respond as Lenny Waters stepped up to the podium with his plastic combover and even more plastic smile. Some poor souls out there probably thought he was handsome and charming and that was why he was picked to deliver this propaganda press conference. But something about him made Chuck feel like he'd been accused of date rape when he was in college and school officials didn't want to "ruin his future" so they let him off scot-free.

"Cadabra… what do you think of when you hear that word?"

"Abused employees working shit hours in a hot warehouse with shit pay and no benefits?" Chuck groused. "Low prices and low quality? Free next-day shipping that has gotten further and further away from actually being next day ever since they stole a monopoly on literally everything? Fuckers…" He really couldn't call them that enough.

"—but it isn't magic, is it? What we're building here is through the hard work of our wonderful Cadabra employees. And you'll get to see their smiling faces and thank them in person now that we are opening a brick-and-mortar right here in your town. Customer service with real people. No calling a phone number. And we'll bring you affordable prices, too. It's been a dream of our CEO Geoff Frezos to do this right here in Del Rey, this lovely beach community, for years and now you'll be a part of that dream—"

"HELL NO! HELL NO! MONOPOLIES HAVE GOT TO GO!"

Chuck sat up straighter as voices cut in behind the paltry bullshit speech of the "operations manager". His mask twitched a little as he tried to speak over them.

"But it isn't just about our customers. It'll be about our products, too. Quality and—"

"MONOPOLIES HAVE GOT TO GO! BOOOO! BOOOOOOO CADABRA!"

Why was that last voice kind of famili—Oh. Oh God.

He shifted to the edge of the couch, his breath leaving his body, hands clamped over his mouth as Martha, owner of MegaJamz record store, stood behind the podium and pointed her megaphone at him, her voice coming through it loudly and clearly.

"Cadabra is bankrupting small businesses, kicking them out of communities, killing local jobs, destroying livelihoods of local entrepreneurs. Small business employs fifty percent of the workforce in this country, it's the backbone of America, the backbone of Del Rey. Cadabra is breaking those backbones in half! Splintering our community!" she yelled into her megaphone.

Lenny glanced back at her, raised his eyebrows as if sharing an inside joke with the press, and let out a condescending breathy chuckle. "Well, we aren't popular with everyone…"

"Oh, fuck you!" Chuck exclaimed, nearly throwing a couch pillow at his own TV.

"Cadabra sells things at a lower price to lure well-meaning folks away from shopping locally at independently owned small businesses, and once they clinch a monopoly on that product, those prices shoot up again! You can literally track it!" She held up a large poster-board with a graph on it.

"Okay, can we…maybe continue the press conference? It's a free country, I guess. People can be loud if they want to…" Lenny tried.

"If you have a favorite local shop, support that shop by telling Cadabra to keep the hell out of Del Rey! Or you'll see that shop go under within a year!" Martha dropped the poster board and up came another one. "These are all the shops that closed down in a small town in Michigan when a Cadabra brick-and-mortar opened nearby. Mom and pops that had been there for decades all gone within a year!"

An idiot from Cadabra came up to Martha and tried to talk to her, but she turned the megaphone right into his face and belted, "Get away from me! Don't touch me! Cadabra wants to kill our small businesses!" she yelled in the direction of the cameras again.

"Can we do something about this? I'm trying to have a peaceful press conference."

"Small Business Saturday is this Saturday! The Victoria Shopping Center on 5th and Rose is hosting a festival all day long! Win prizes, play games, shop at our small businesses. Music, live band, and a DJ! Great food! Real people and not an AI algorithm!"

"Oh, come on!" Lenny exclaimed over his shoulder. Then he turned back towards what Chuck assumed were a police presence. "You're just letting her do this?"

"5th and Rose!" she repeated again. "We're celebrating small businesses, but also this community! A COMMUNITY THAT DOESN'T NEED CADABRA!"

"Are you done?" Lenny asked into the microphone.

"Nope!" she bellowed into the megaphone.

Chuck was cracking up at this point. He was buying this woman a whole damn car, whatever car she wanted. Holy shit.

"Tell us why Geoff Frezos and his ex-wife—oh sorry ex-wives—have more wealth than most of the countries on this planet combined! Is it because of good business? Or do they not pay taxes the way the rest of us do? Is it because they pay their employees properly? Or are they basically glorified sweatshop workers?"

"As I was saying," Lenny tried to talk over her, leaning so close to the mic that he was practically eating it. "We're dead-set on making sure we—"

"KILL SMALL BUSINESSES IN DEL REY?!" Martha cut in.

Lenny cleared his throat, clearly furious but trying to hold it in. "Give back to the community. We'll be employing citizens of Del Rey—"

"For garbage pay and with no benefits?! Sounds great!" she trolled him.

He finally snapped, turning to glare at her. "Oh, and you provide benefits, do you?!" he snarled.

She calmly replied into the megaphone: "I have three employees, Lenny, and each one gets over minimum wage, healthcare insurance, sick leave with pay, vacation, and I've set up retirement plans for them…"

Well, that didn't go the way he wanted it to. Chuck laughed hard, shaking his head. His phone buzzed and he grabbed it to see that Sarah had texted. His spine straightened, his heart racing even more than it already had been with the absolute show Martha was putting on.

"OMG are you seeing this? Did Martha come out of one of your comics? MY HERO!"

He laughed, typing back, "No but I'm gonna write one about her and it'll be a bestseller. SHE'S EMBARRASSING HIM!"

Chuck turned back to the TV to see that a police officer was begrudgingly guiding her out from behind Lenny Waters now. This time she didn't bellow in the cop's face, and he knew it was both because she was smart as hell and had self-preservation, and because he knew she always carried what happened to her brother during a routine traffic stop when she was a teenager with her wherever she went. Her brother had lived to tell his tale, at least, but it left a horrid mark of trauma on that family.

Thankfully, while she was off-camera now, Chuck still heard her leading hecklers for the rest of the press conference off to the side. And he sent her a text just to make sure she was okay: "I'm buying your whole family a week's worth of dinners for this. But most importantly, you didn't just get arrested, did you? I've got your bail!"

When Lenny finally ended the press conference, Chuck turned off his TV, pushed his hands through his hair, and laughed again. He went back to his phone.

Sarah had responded: "I'm in love with her maybe? Sad because she's married and has a kid."

Chuck snorted hard. "This has been my struggle for years. SIGH." And for some reason he felt the need to add a "JK!" particularly because he was talking to Sarah. He rolled his eyes at himself for being the way he was.

He could at least admit to himself there was a crush there. How could he not? On a shallow level, randomly seeing a woman that beautiful in a coffee shop would make his chest feel tight.

But that aside, she was incredibly smart, a quick thinker, a good businesswoman, kind, warm, and she was funny even though she tried to tell him once that she wasn't. He'd also discovered she was super strong, the things he'd witnessed her lugging around for the festival.

So he felt pretty confident in deciding that he really had no choice in the matter. There was nothing he could do to stop himself from crushing.

Another text came in, this time from Martha: "LMAO yr so dumb no you aint buying us shit but man that felt so good! Cops just took me off to the side to stand with the other protestors and told me to stay there and stop pissing off 'the suit' HA!"

Chuck cracked up and sent "You are MY FAVORITE. Cops in solidarity with the ppl for once, legit."

"Mhm I know for a fact I am NOT yr favorite but thanks anyways."

She added a winking emoji and he decided to just ignore that last one. He had a feeling he knew who she was referring to. It seemed a lot of people were under…certain impressions…

They were wrong, though.

Even if he was harboring a harmless little crush.

He and Sarah were all business. Because their livelihoods were on the line. These stores they'd opened were a dream, not a pipe dream, a dream they'd worked their asses off to make a reality. Sure, it had all looked very different for him than it had looked for her. But that didn't take away from the fact that neither of them wanted to watch what they'd made crumble under the pressure of big box corporate monopoly.

He turned his phone over when it buzzed, glancing down at the screen. Sarah again. He needed the obnoxious thumping of his stupid heart to stop doing the thing.

Did it have to happen, like, every single time? Really?

"You at the shop today?"

"Taking the day off."

"Oh good!" He waited as the dots showed up, Sarah typing something else. She added, "You deserve a day off, all the work you've done the last 2 weeks."

"Me?" He added about fifteen question marks. "What about you? Singlehandedly running your store 6/7 days of the week, the 7th day not really a day off cuz you're building a festival with me."

Chuck went to his balcony, slid the door open further, and stepped out onto the cool wood. It was a beautiful morning, the sun inching up over the homes behind him, baking the back of his neck and his arms. A beach breeze played with his curls and flapped at his clothing.

He took a picture of the beach, two surfers out there still in spite of families starting to trudge through the sand to pick their spot for the day, maybe still on a Thanksgiving break or something?

On a whim, he sent it to Sarah, captioning it: "My view for the day if I let myself be a super lazy Thursday bum."

She responded almost immediately. "Pretty fucked up, sending me that when I'm getting ready to go to the store for yet another day of working the place all by myself!" He almost freaked himself out, afraid that he'd pissed her off, that she was actually annoyed with him for sending that picture, like he was gloating. He was kicking himself for not having more tact… but then a laughing emoji popped up and she added: "Gorgeous view. I might have to close for the day, crash your party, and come over."

He took a few deep, long breaths, staring at her words. "Do it." He hit send.

But then a few seconds later she responded with, "Haha! Yeah in a fair world, maybe. Instead I'll be selling some books."

"Sell lots of em!"

He leaned his hands on the railing of his balcony and took another long breath, letting it out slowly. Chuck decided to do himself a favor and not overthink what just happened there.

Instead, he'd head out for a dip in the ocean, freeze his ass off, and take a hot shower afterwards. Then the rest of the day would be his. And he would not overthink. He would not dwell. He would not stare at the text exchange he'd just had with the bookstore owner.

}o{

Casey clasped his hand on Chen's shoulder. "Thanks, Chen. Great work."

Chen put the last gift basket down in the storage room behind the Victoria Shopping Center's main office. It was the only space that was big enough to store the gift baskets for tomorrow that also had a lock.

After all the work she'd done, and Chuck, Martha, Philomena from the ice cream shop, and even at times Carina and Ellie respectively, there was no way they could let any of the twenty-five baskets get stolen.

"This is perfect, Chen. Thank you."

He tipped his baseball cap adorably. "My pleasure. I've talked to Pauline about security. We're going to have multiple people patrolling the center all night tonight, boss," he told Casey then. "Lots of valuables around."

"Yep. Good thinkin'. We just gotta make it past tomorrow."

Poor Casey. He looked almost stricken with fear at the thought of tomorrow, how many people would be packed into his usually cozy but roomy shopping center. Swarms of people would flock to the center if they were lucky.

"Hopefully Martha's stunt means we'll be packed all day. No better way to get the word out about our festival than that," Sarah chirped, blowing a bit of hair from her face.

Casey snickered. "Heheh. That was funny. Thought he was gonna combust right there in the middle of his li'l press conference. Heheheh. Lenny Waters? More like Lenny Flambé."

Sarah had to laugh. She decided Casey was funny when his barbs weren't directed at the undeserving target that was one comic book shop owner.

"Martha will forever be a legend for that," she said, shaking her head, before following the two men out of the storage area, watching as Casey turned and locked the door securely.

Chen went off to do maintenance business, citing a jammed door at the antique shop, and Sarah was left with her landlord in the shopping center front office.

"So we're ready for tomorrow then?" Casey asked, leaning against the edge of the administrator's desk and crossing his arms.

"Almost. We have everyone's booths set up, displays are up, everyone knows where they're gonna be, band has confirmed, stage is built for the band and Martha's DJ sets. Just a few wrinkles to iron out today." She glanced at her watch. "I need to go open my store, but don't worry about tomorrow. It'll all go smoothly. Smooth sailing from here on out."

He made a face like she'd just told him he was wearing the ugliest shirt and pants combo she'd ever seen. "Worried? I'm not worried." He stood up straight and curled his lip. "I don't worry. Worrying means I haven't crossed my t's or dotted my i's and I always cross my t's and dot my i's."

Sarah widened her eyes and pressed her lips into a tight line. "Well. Okay. Glad you're not worried. Chuck will do enough worrying for the rest of us."

"Well, he's a ball of overthinking-trivial-shit, isn't he? So it checks out."

"He overthinks because he cares," she said defensively, crossing her arms. "He could do a lot worse."

"Heh. Uh huh. Whatever dipping of your peanut butter in his chocolate you're doin', I honestly couldn't give less of a shit. So long as tomorrow goes well and Cadabra doesn't put my shopping center in the red by forcing all my business owners to close." He wiggled his hand towards the door then, as if telling her she was dismissed.

She clenched her jaw at him.

"You don't get to do that with your hand at me, John Casey," she heard herself say. Oops. He looked at her with surprise. But she decided she was kind of on a roll, so why not continue? "Don't dismiss me like I'm your underling. I'm renting a storefront from you, but you aren't my boss. I've kept up with the rent, and the rest of what I do here is up to me. You don't get to dismiss me." She wiggled her hand the way he'd just done, then crossed her arms again, meeting his shocked gaze.

Casey tilted his head, then made a huh face. Then he smirked a little bit. Nodded. "Sorry. You're right."

Oh. Well, shit.

"S'okay," she said. Then she nodded at him, he nodded back again, and she turned on her heel to leave. She paused once she stepped outside of the office, into the morning sunlight, and she whistled low, grinning to herself.

"Someone looks like they just got the promotion."

She spun to look where the voice came from, a voice she'd recognized the moment she heard it.

"Dad?"

He smiled from where he leaned against the Victoria Shopping Center sign. "Hey, Darlin'…"

}o{

Chuck's step stuttered at the look on Sarah's face as she turned to look at the man who'd seemed to have been waiting for her there, leaning against their shopping center's old-school wooden sign.

Maybe. Maybe he'd been waiting…?

He couldn't tell.

But he'd been headed for the office himself to ask Casey if he needed any last minute tasks done—sure, he might be kissing ass a little but he wanted so badly for the guy not to dislike him—when he saw Sarah come out of the office, pause for a moment, a beaming smile on her face, maybe some pride there, too…

And then the cool cat leaning against the sign said something and she looked at him almost like he was a ghost. What's worse, he saw a mask slide over her features, like she was trying to hide how this guy made her feel. Immediately, without pause.

Almost like it was her defense mechanism.

And now Chuck had been standing here staring at them as they stared at each other. The guy was saying something else, Sarah was looking down at the ground with something like a flash of anger. Was that anger? Damn it, she was so much harder to read than most people.

He needed to hide, get out of the open where they'd see him.

Sarah only had to look up a bit more past the slick guy's shoulder and she'd see him awkwardly gawking; she'd know he'd been standing rooted to that spot, staring at them like a nosey weirdo.

He looked right, then left, found a tree with a wider trunk, and dove for it, hiding behind it by straightening his spine and carefully peeking around it to watch as Sarah nervously tucked some of her hair behind her ear, away from her face. She nodded, said something to the slick dude, then gestured towards her store.

They walked together to the quad, squeezing through the displays and booths, and made their way in the direction of the store. He watched them the whole time, sneaking around the tree to make sure he was still hiding.

"The fuck're you doing?"

Chuck winced, then reached up to poke at the bark of the tree, turning to look at Casey who'd just come out of his office and was looking at him as if he didn't have a shred of clothing on—a mixture of what the fuck and disgust. "Oh. Might want to just—Um, maybe the gardener should check this tree. Heard on the news this type of tree has been getting a disease in the…Southern California region. Yeah. Something with the roots. And the…bark. The tree bark."

Dear God.

"Oh, yeah? What kind of tree is that then?"

"Birch!" he blurted. "Birch…aspen… sooo… Ahem. Anyway, gonna check on the shop. You don't have anything you need me to do today, Casey? Little last minute things?"

"Sell your comic books and stop bein' so fuggin' weird, Bartowski. That's the best way you can help me. And stop molestin' my trees."

He stomped off, leaving Chuck to wince miserably. He patted the Definitely Not a Birch Aspen and shook his head, making his way towards his shop. But Sarah hadn't taken cool guy into her store. Instead, they were at the table where Chuck had been dumped, the table where he'd had his first not-alone lunch after the dumping thanks to Sarah, the table where he'd learned that she was actually incredibly thoughtful and kind and maybe not as judgmental or thieving as all that.

Her body language was very closed off, her arms crossed, chin down, and then she pushed to her feet from where she leaned against the table top, facing the man, talking to him while waving her hand around. She was clearly upset.

Chuck kept his feet moving, and then realized she'd probably seen him by now, so he paused a few feet from the door, shifted to look at them, caught Sarah's gaze for a moment… Her eyes went sort of wide.

He lifted a hand to wave, the corner of his mouth tilting up. She looked away then, at the other man, as if she hadn't seen him at all.

But cool guy turned around, probably having seen her look at something over his shoulder.

Chuck dropped his hand to his side quickly, before the guy could see it. He looked like he was maybe in his late forties, early fifties. And he looked confused as he caught sight of Chuck.

Trying not to feel brushed off, or maybe even a little rejected, he spun on his heel and went into his shop quickly, immediately asking the first customer he saw if they needed help finding anything to quash the icky feeling in his chest.

}o{

"What are you doing here?"

Translation: how did he find her?

"I'm your dad. You think I'm not keeping tabs on my little girl?"

She pursed her lips and looked down, shifting her weight to another foot. "Mom tell you about this place?"

"What? Your mom?" He thrusted his hands out to the sides and gave her a befuddled look. "Sar, I haven't spoken to your mom in years and even if I had, you think she'd ever tell me anything that'd help me find you? Pfft."

Sarah shook her head in frustration, glancing out over the quad, crossing her arms at her chest, almost hugging herself. This wasn't what she needed the day before what would be a massively important festival for her and her store, a festival that might make or break the future of this dream endeavor of hers.

"I'm a little busted up you never told your dad you opened up a whole business on your own." He whistled, and she turned to look at him, the big smile on his face, as if he'd had anything to do with it. Nobody had helped her; if anything, both of her parents had seeped energy from her, money from her, making this adventure all the more difficult.

"Well, a bookstore isn't exactly a goldmine, so I didn't think you'd be interested." She looked down at her feet, still unable to look him in the eye when she said something that was meant to sting him. Because he was still her dad, and in spite of the heartbreak and disappointment he'd given her consistently throughout her whole life so far, she loved him.

Somewhere in her chest, at least. There was love in there somewhere. That was what made her feel a twinge of guilt when she said something that was true but a slap to the face.

"Hm," he hummed. "Guess I deserved that crack, huh?" There was tense silence between them then. "Hey, I came all the way out here to see ya. D'ya have time to talk to your ol' man? Maybe someplace a little less noisy?" She looked up as he gestured at the passing cars in the busy street next to their shopping center.

Sarah nodded wordlessly, that stupid ache in her chest. Her fingers and toes also had this bad tingle, like he was here for something, something that would mean another choice: did she tell him to get lost or give him the loan he needed?

She didn't have money for a loan.

She was barely making rent on the store and her apartment.

Glancing over her shoulder to make sure he was following, she led him through the booths and displays for tomorrow's festival.

"What's all this stuff everywhere? Is it always here? Kinda…uh…"

"What?" she asked.

"Well, a little cluttered, don't ya think?"

She snorted without mirth. "Tomorrow is Small Business Saturday."

"Small whatnow?"

Well, at least she wasn't the only one who hadn't known about it. Though she supposed a conman wasn't exactly the best company in any light.

"Today is Black Friday. To answer Black Friday, small businesses celebrate the day after Friday as Small Business Saturday. People who give a crap about their communities go shop at their local independent stores, the mom and pops. We're having a festival here in our quad to celebrate," she explained.

"Well, not my kind of party… Heh." She sent him a bit of a glare. "But it's a big deal for a small business. Great idea. Gets people out here," he rushed, probably realizing he sounded like an asshole.

And then his arm was over her shoulders and he was tugging her into his side, and she hated the way she immediately felt the way she'd felt when she was eight years old and he'd give her a hug. Like her dad cared about her more than anything, like she was safe.

It was a false sensation, misinformation.

She knew that. He wasn't safe. And he didn't care about her more than anything. If he had, he would've left the con game the moment her mom had told him she was pregnant, that he was going to be a father.

Still, she let him give her the side-hug as they walked towards her store.

"S'good to see ya, Sarah. It really is."

"Good to see you, too, Dad."

Maybe she wasn't all that sure if she meant that. No, she did mean it. And that made her feel worse.

If she could just cut the tether, would that make her life more or less difficult? Less difficult. Definitely. And yet, blocking her dad out of her life forever would make her miserable, and she knew it.

Because she felt emotions threatening to assail her, she halted at the bench, the same bench she'd found herself at more than once now after the last month or two of chaos that opening her shop had brought into her life.

"Why did you show up here?" she asked, shifting to lean against the top of the table. She crossed her arms again. "I'm trying to make something real, from scratch, on my own."

"You think I showed up to ruin that or somethin'?" he asked, looking a little defensive. He stood a few feet to the side of her, his hands on his hips.

No. Not on purpose, at least.

"You worry like that with your mom? Or is it just me, the deadbeat dad?"

And now he was doing the defensive, offended, hurt shtick. It had worked with her when she was a teenager, but she wasn't a teenager anymore. She was twenty-six, and she wasn't going to be gaslit by her father anymore.

"Mom hasn't come to my store yet."

"Ha! A-ha! See? I beat 'er to it."

A contest. With him, it was always a contest.

Sarah frowned deeply. "If you've been keeping tabs on me, why are you only showing up now, two months after my opening day?"

He pursed his lips thoughtfully, stuffing his hands in his jacket pockets and shifting his weight. "Well, I didn't know about it for a while… See, I came out here to LA to see my little girl. I've got a break from, you know, my work…"

"From conning people?"

He ignored that. "And I thought, man, I'd love to see my Sarah. So I flew into LA for a few days, and would you believe it, first paper I got my hands on, there's a little picture of you and some books. Sarah Walker, bookstore owner, in Del Rey. I had to come see it for myself."

Sarah wasn't sure how much of that she believed, but she decided to let him have it this once, because it felt good, thinking it was true.

"Yeah, they did a few little pieces about the new bookstore in the Victoria Shopping Center," she said with a shrug. Had it worked? Time would tell. Things had gotten a bit better in the last few weeks at least. She thought her fellow shop owners were doing a lot of the heavy lifting, getting the word out. People kept coming in with bags from Ashcan Comics, MegaJamz, Eye Spy, Toy Central, and the other stores around the center.

"Are you here to ask me for money?" she blurted then. "Because I can't. Not right now."

He gestured at the store. "Sarah. Darlin'. Come on. You think I'm gonna show up here lookin' for a loan when you just opened your own business? No, no. I don't want your money."

That was pretty rich, considering he'd wanted it so many other times before this.

"So you're…really just here to…?"

"To see how you're doing. That's it." He crossed his arms. "And maybe there's a little job I need help with in Pacific Palisades, a nice little rich old lady with a billion dollars and—I'm joking!" he gushed, reaching over to nudge her, beaming. "Come on, Sarah. You used to think my jokes were pretty funny."

"I was a child and didn't know any better," she said, a dark look on her face. "It isn't as funny when it's an easily believable scenario. And it's believable because it's happened before."

He winced, pressing his lips into a thin line and squinting off to the side. He seemed not to know how to respond to that.

But then Sarah saw some movement over his shoulder. And oh shit. No. No no no no no. She knew she should've taken her dad all the way into the store.

Not Chuck. Anybody but Chuck.

He seemed not to really know what to do, and he lifted his hand just a little, an awkward, jerky wave by his hip.

This couldn't happen right now.

She'd learned quite a bit about Chuck over the past few days, including that he was the Charles Bartowski, brother of the Eleanor Bartowski, the kids who'd been the subject of Gone in the Night, a six-episode miniseries that chronicled the sudden and mysterious disappearance of both of their parents. Not only that, she'd gone down multiple rabbit holes on Google after Carina left the other day. Chuck Bartowski, owner of Ashcan Comics, was also a billionaire, or if not quite a billionaire, very close to it. The nephew of Alexei Volkoff, also died in a plane crash near the Cayman Islands. Alexei Volkoff of Volkoff Industries. And the man had left everything to his niece and nephew upon his death. Chuck had even been the CEO of Volkoff Industries for close to a year, before suddenly pulling back, giving the CEO position to Volkoff's second-in-command Vivian MacArthur. He still owned the company, even sat on the board, but left the running of it to others, so that he could have this little comic book shop in Del Rey.

It was…insane.

Everything she thought she'd known about him had been so suddenly turned onto its head, and now she didn't think she knew anything about him. He'd told her he'd inherited a fortune, so soon after meeting her, just a few conversations in, hadn't he? It wasn't like he was lying to her about any of it. But the magnitude of it had left her sitting and staring at the wall for a good hour.

If her dad knew about Chuck's money, that she'd formed a sort of…working partnership with him, that he potentially had an in with this exceptionally rich man with a good heart, Chuck would immediately become a target.

She couldn't let Chuck become her dad's next mark.

So she looked away from Chuck and stared hard at her father, as if she hadn't seen anyone at all. But she'd gotten most of her wily, quick-on-her-feet nature from her dad, and he'd seen everything happen on her face in that split second.

Furrowing his brow, he muttered, "What're you—?" and turned to look over his shoulder at what she'd been staring at.

Shit.

Fuck.

God damn it.

Chuck seemed to almost startle a little, and then he reached up to scratch at his temple, hurrying to open the door to Ashcan Comics and duck inside quickly.

"Dad, I appreciate you coming, but I have to open my store."

He turned back, seeming like he'd just brushed off the strange little interlude with the tall curly-haired nerd outside of the comic book shop.

"Well, you gonna invite me inside to see it? Or do I gotta stay out here all day?" He gently knuckled her elbow. "C'mon. This is a great opportunity to show off for your ol' pops. I wanna see what you've built."

She snorted, rolling her eyes, smiling this time and shaking her head. "Yeah, fine. Okay. You can see it." She held up a finger then, watching the excitement in his face ignite a certain light in his eyes. "But only if you buy a book from me."

"Pfft! Darlin'! Please!" He shrugged, gesturing for her to lead the way. She did, taking her keys out of her pocket and pulling the right one for the front door. "F'course I'm buyin' a book! Did you forget I'm the one you got the reader bug from?" She unlocked the door, letting him in, constantly aware of the lack of an alarm ever since Chuck brought it up that one time.

"Yeah, I know. Mom isn't…a huge reader." She pulled at the blinds and her dad moved to start from the other side, helping her open up.

"Not a huge reader? Heh. She doesn't read. At all. She prefers to sit in front of a TV set an' rot 'er brain." Sarah clenched her jaw a little at him, but he wasn't paying attention, still talking. "I used to sit with you before you went to sleep, when you were just a little thing. I'd bring home normal books for kids, you know, about princesses and cute furry little animals. But you didn't want any of that. You always had to have something wordy, some thick book that was two hundred years old," he said with a chuckle. "Unless it was somethin' like Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn, which are children's classics. Kinda killed two birds with one stone on those."

"A Little Princess," Sarah said fondly, moving to lean against the front window display. "I loved that book so much." She shrugged. "And you were really good at reading it out loud, Dad. You were especially good at Miss Minchin's voice, if I recall correctly." She smiled at him.

"Oh, that ugly, ugly woman. Nasty piece o' work." He grinned over at her, then looked around the place. "Hey, it's nice and big, huh? Your store?"

"Yeah," she said with a nod. "I didn't quite know how I'd fill it, and then I looked at the orders from the publishers and realized I probably don't know how to keep it from overflowing now, there's so much great stuff being published."

"New stuff, huh?" He sent her a dubious look. "You and your love for the classics…"

"I'm having to…evolve, I guess." She chuckled, turning to take in her own store.

"Hm. I'm gonna look at stuff while we talk. That okay?"

"Please, yeah. I need to get the drawer set up and everything anyway."

But he was already peering at the new release wall, turning to glance at a promotion she'd put up to celebrate LA authors, and moving on to the fiction section.

"Do you remember that time you an' me were sitting on the floor in the living room by that fireplace we never used, and I was teachin' you how to play poker? There was this blood curdling scream…" He took a book out and turned it over to read about it. Sarah ducked into the back to pop open the safe she'd hidden, pulled out the money bag, and came back out front to begin counting the money into the drawer. "We ran into the kitchen to find your mom on the counter," he said. "I remember her knee was inside of a bowl filled with flour and egg because she was tryin' to make us those French toast sticks.… There was this little white mouse, just a tiny little guy." He laughed, shaking his head and putting the book back, then turning to look at the row of books behind him. "D'you remember what you did?"

Sarah smiled a little, shutting the drawer, swinging around the doorway into the back again to stick the money bag into the safe and lock it securely, hiding it once more.

She came out to see that he'd found the technology section and was breezing right past it to the mystery wall.

"Mhm. Yep. I caught it and went all the way downstairs to let it out in the bushes outside."

She leaned her palms on the counter and watched him as he spun to grin at her, pointing in her direction.

"That's right. That's when I knew you were destined for great things, Sarah. Not just quick to the draw, catchin' a whole mouse with nothin' but an old shoebox… but you've got that big heart goin' on, too… Not letting your mom kill it the way she wanted to."

Sarah had remembered all of this very differently than her dad, apparently. With his look of reminiscing, the small smile on his face.

He hadn't just been teaching her poker. He'd been teaching her how to count cards.

And she also remembered that while she was making eye contact with the little white mouse, trying to reassure it with a look, let it know she meant it no harm, concentrating as hard as she was on catching it safely, her parents were yelling at each other.

Her dad was mocking her mom for jumping onto the counter and screeching, and he was making fun of her for the egg on her pink capri pants too. And her mom was yelling at him for mocking her.

Sarah had quietly taken care of the problem in the meantime, catching the white mouse in her shoebox with a little piece of string cheese. She gently trapped it inside, cooing to it, and then she stood there in front of her parents, both of them struck silent in shock. And she wordlessly left them behind, leaving the apartment, going all the way down multiple flights of stairs by herself, shouldering her way through the lobby door and finding a nice bush for the white mouse.

"Yeah, I remember," was all she had the energy to say.

"I miss your mom."

Sarah froze.

"Sometimes I think about her and I miss her. Hey," he said, turning to look at her with a quizzical look on his face, but she could see him wearing a mask, making it seem like he was casually bringing this up, wrecking his daughter's entire day. "She ever…go with anybody else?"

"No," Sarah snapped, holding up a hand for him to stop, her body rigid.

"She didn't?"

"No, I mean, no I need you to stop. I'm not having this conversation with you."

He seemed confused as he wandered a little closer. "Why? S'wrong?"

"It's unfair, that's what's wrong. It's unfair to me. I don't know how you do it. I don't know how you look back at that time and everything's all sunny and rosy, like we were some happy little family, but that wasn't how it was for me. I was the one who had to be there for the fights, hearing glass breaking because mom threw a cup or something."

"Oh. Sure, she got a little pissed and she'd throw stuff, but she never was actually trying to hit me. She missed on purpose." He chuckled.

He actually chuckled.

"You don't get to tell me shit like you miss Mom. Not after I haven't seen you in over a year, not after she hasn't seen you in even longer than that."

"I'd like to come see her, but she never lets me."

"Because you were arrested three times while you were together, Dad. What's she supposed to do, wait for you every single time? When she asked you, we both asked you, to get a legitimate job, to stop with the cons?" She shook her head. "I'm not having this conversation today. It isn't fair. Today was supposed to be about planning and now I'm just…" She flexed her fingers, made a disgruntled growling sound, and came out from behind the counter, grabbing a dust cloth, some Pledge, and furiously moving books to dust the shelves.

"Angry dusting… Your mom used to do that, too."

"Are you listening?" she snapped, spinning on him.

"Sure, of course!" He shrugged defensively, as if she was being the unfair one, out of control, getting riled up over nothing. He'd done that to her mom, too.

Sarah took a deep breath. And then she set down the Pledge and the cloth, pushing some hair away from her face, crossing her arms, and finally looking at him. "Neither of you tried. Neither of you tried to fix what was going on between you, not for me and not for yourselves. Mom, with the drinking and gambling. You, refusing to leave the con game and make a go at an honest living, being with your family. So I don't want to hear how you miss her. It isn't fair. I don't want to hear that after what you both put me through."

She snatched up the cloth and Pledge to continue dusting furiously.

"Okay. You know what? I hear you. You're right. It's unfair. I retract that part of the conversation."

"Thank you."

At least he sounded genuine, like he'd heard her this time, actually heard her and wasn't just saying it.

And then…

"Say, who was that kid outside the shop who was lookin' at us all weird earlier? 'Fore we came inside…"

Sarah's eyes went wide, only because she was facing away from him. She swallowed, slipped a mask over her face, and glanced at him casually over her shoulder. "Who?"

Jack Burton snorted. Or whatever his name was now.

He was always Jack Burton to her, because that'd been his name when he lived with them, before her mom gave up after the third arrest.

"Uh huh. Right. 'Who' you say. Sure. I saw your eyes do somethin'…I dunno, funky."

"What are you talking about?" she tried.

"Go 'head, play it off. But that's why I turned to look. Your eyes went funky. It was like you'd seen a ghost, but no, wait… Not a ghost." She turned to face him, giving him her best what the fuck are you talking about look. "It was a quick flash of surprise, and…huh…excitement. Yeah." He crossed his arms as she deepened her annoyed, confused look. He wrinkled his nose, gesturing towards the comic book shop. "Is that a thing?"

"What thing? What are you talking about?" she repeated. "I don't even remember anybody—Oh, him? That guy?" she asked when he gave her a flat look. "The tall guy? He owns the comic book shop next door. What about him?" she asked with a shrug.

"Boy, you are really trying hard, Darlin'. It must be a thing."

Shit.

It made her furious, the fact that he didn't care enough to see her more often unless he needed something, unless he needed money or a place to hide-out (yes, he'd done that, too, but only the two times)… but he also knew her better than a lot of people because she really was a lot like him.

Her mother insisted she was like him all the time when she was growing up, especially when she made her angry over something, when she was in trouble. You're just like him in so many ways, you know that? It hadn't hurt, it hadn't felt offensive to her, until she grew old enough to understand the full picture of who her dad was. Then, it had felt like a slap to the face.

Maybe that was why she'd fought so freaking hard to raise and save the money to get this bookstore off the ground. She wanted to forge her own path, without using other people, without stealing, without conning well-meaning people. And maybe that was why she tore Chuck a new one for those signs. She'd overcorrected. Overreacted.

But she couldn't become like this man standing in the middle of her store, two of her books in hand now, staring at her, waiting for her to respond.

"I still don't know what you mean by 'a thing'…" she muttered.

"You…and that gangly guy with the messy curls…dating."

Chuck's hair had looked particularly messy as he stood there at his shop door, hadn't it? Had he done that on purpose, or was he having an insane morning, too? Honestly, her day had started just fine, only this freaking leech had to show up and ruin it.

That wasn't fair. Thinking of him as just a leech and nothing else. He had done a lot for her. He'd taught her how to survive in the world way more than her mom had. Jack was a fighter, her mom was a…giver-upper. She would much rather fight than give up.

And then it was also…pretty fair. Because he was a leech most of the time. Charming his way into places and then taking everything he could get his hands on as he sweet-talked and gaslit you. You turn around, and you're left with nothing, and he's long gone…

"Aw mannnnn, I knew it." Her dad made a disappointed clicking sound with her teeth and she felt a pang of defensiveness immediately. "I really hope he isn't some kinda schnook."

"That guy?" She pointed towards the store. "First of all, you're wrong. There's no 'thing', I'm not dating anyone because I do not have the time or mental capacity for something like that right now. The store is my priority. Secondly, he isn't a schnook. From what I can tell, he's a good guy."

"Did I see that it's a comic book shop?" He gave her a miserable look. "Sarah. Please. Whatever you do, don't date a fella who reads comic books. That's the path to destruction."

She couldn't help it. She laughed. That was such a ridiculous thing to say. And she thought that if she told Chuck that, he would laugh, too. He had a pretty secure sense of humor, she'd discovered, and he took her teasing about comics in the way she meant him to take it. She actually admired him for liking them as sincerely as he seemed to. He loved his shop. He loved his product. She wanted to come off that way about her books—she hoped she did. That was what made people come back to a place. The passion of the employees.

"Dad, that's utterly insane. It's basically a book but with pictures and panels and whatever else."

"Pow! Bang! Oof!" her dad exclaimed. "It's nonsense! Anyway, people who like that stuff are weirdos. They never grew outta their childhood. Please don't date a weirdo schnook, Sarah."

"I've told you multiple times now, I'm not in a relationship. Also, he is not a weirdo schnook." He was maybe kind of weird. But not in the way her dad meant it. It was adorable, sweet. And she needed to not have these thoughts right now in case they showed on her face.

He would absolutely see it.

Her dad was too smart for his own good.

"Okay, but he looks pretty schnookish. Also…do comic book people bathe? I've heard some of 'em don't know how to do personal hygiene… Has he ever seen a comb before?"

She drew the line there. Nobody talked crap on Chuck Bartowski's hair while she was around. Hell no.

"Enough. Stop dragging him. He's been super kind to me."

"I'm sure he has been," Jack scoffed. "A girl like you movin' in next door? You are so far outta his league, Sarah. Remember that when he tries to get extra nice."

"You don't know anything about him. Stop it."

"See? You're all defensive. Now what's that about?"She hated how smug he was about all of this. Freaking megalomaniac. She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I'm being defensive because you're insulting a genuinely nice guy who has helped me out a lot." And she still had a sneaking suspicion he'd helped her in one particular way that had been a mystery to her for months. "It doesn't mean we're a thing just because I'm sticking up for him. I'd stick up for anybody who deserved it, doesn't mean I wanna date 'em."

"Okay, okay. I'm just sayin'….step lightly with the schnook. I don't trust him. He looks…wily."

"Well, you've given me a really good education on how to spot wily people and not let them take advantage of me. I got firsthand experience with the wiliest conman of all conmen." She gestured at him. "So thanks so much for that."

And somehow he looked a little proud of himself.

"That wasn't a compliment," she said.

"Yeeeeeah, I heard the tone. I know. But I'm still takin' it as one, since I'm a conman."

Jerk.

"Just pick a book. I'm wasting time with this conversation and I have a lot of work I need to get done. Okay?"

"Okay, okay! I'll stop talkin' about the schnook and pick a book." He paused. She'd heard it, too. "Eyyy! I'm a poet!"

Shaking her head, she couldn't even stop the slightly amused smile that betrayed her.

"Help me pick somethin'… That's what you do here, right?"

She sighed, thinking back to what she'd seen him read for fun the times she'd seen him read when she was growing up. Westerns. He loved that shit. And she always wondered if he thought he was some kind of outlaw, driving around through the Southwestern desert in his old cars, having just busted open a Wells-Fargo bank vault in a small town in the middle of New Mexico—in reality, he probably just stole money from suburbia pretending to be a door-to-door salesman. Like an asshole.

She remembered one she'd ordered because it had sounded super interesting, and it turned the genre on its head, subverted it. He might not buy it, but she was going to try anyway.

Sarah snagged it from the fiction section and brought it back to him. "This one. I think you'll love it. Got all the stuff you love about a good Western. Outlaws, a bit of cat and mouse with the lawmen, disillusionment, gunfights…"

"Hmm!" He turned it over, read a bit about it, then made a face, sending her a dubious look. "They're all ladies. Only the lawmen are fellas."

She just shrugged, keeping a straight face.

She dared him to give it back to her and pretend he wasn't sexist.

He did an interested hum, and gathered it into his chest. "Sounds good, what the hell."

Sarah smirked as he went to the counter to pay. She followed after him, a little proud of herself, and maybe pleased with him, too. She couldn't help it. Sure, she was letting him have a low bar there.

"I'm gonna be leaving LA in a few days and I'll need somethin' good to read on the flight."

He slapped a new Baldacci on the counter, too, and she inwardly sighed. She got him to buy a Western starring women outlaws; she couldn't win every battle.

"So how's business, anyway? You got people pourin' through your doors?" He grinned as if he was sure there wasn't any other way his daughter would do this—a successful gambit, a popular bookstore, a hot spot, the perfect third place.

Sarah hated herself, deep deep in her gut, as she answered with a bright and sunny, "Yep. Pouring."

She'd just lied to him. Hard.

But he got this chuffed look on his face, and he reached over as she scanned his books, squeezing her arm. "That's my girl."

Sarah made a doubtful sound and he picked up on it, chuckling.

"Okay, okay, that's my girl…only she's on a nice, straight path, no cons or schemes or anything. On the up 'n up," he corrected. She smiled at that and nodded in approval as he pulled a wallet out and gave her a few twenty dollar bills.

Sarah didn't trust him at all and she held the bills up to check them.

"Oh come onnnnn. You insult me!"

"You're a thief. A conman. I'm checking every bill you give me, even if it's a one dollar bill."

He sighed. "Guess that's fair. …You know what, kid?" She looked at him through her eyelashes, taking his change out of the drawer. "I'm pretty proud of you. You're making it. You're really doin' it. This successful business. A bookstore. I'm proud."

She felt like shit as she gave him his change, letting him hold onto her hand and squeeze it tight in both of his. It felt good, safe again.

But it was a lie—Castle in the Air wasn't a success. She was losing money on it still, a lot of money, even though it was getting a little better.

This sucked.

She sucked for lying like that. It wasn't fair to her, even, to pretend. Because she'd wanted to see that sincere pride from a man who hadn't done anything to earn her need for him to be proud of her.

"Thanks, Dad," she said, her voice tight.

"I'll be around. Here. Here's my phone number for right now." He grabbed a post-it pad and a pen from near her computer monitor and wrote down a number with an LA area code. Interesting. "I'm not leavin' til Monday, so let's see each other for coffee or dinner one more time."

She agreed, her heart in her throat.

And he leaned over the counter to hug her.

She let him. More than that, she wrapped her arms around him and held on tight.

A/N: I couldn't NOT have Sarah and her dad in this fic. For my money, the Jack episodes are two of the best episodes in the whole series. I'm a sucker for Sarah's relationship with her dad. So fraught with so much realistic hard shit, but the love and the need for his love is there. Ugh so good.

If you have the time and energy in this first day of 2024, please leave me a review, let me know what you think.

Thanks, friends.

-SC