A/N: Beefcake part one. Another one too long for one chapter. I feel mixed feelings about Cole in the fandom. Some like, some hate. I chose to not portray him in a bad light, maybe realistic--because Sarah chose to kiss him! She couldn't have thought he was all bad. So many plot holes in this episode. I tried. Casey was eavesdropping on the break up...why? Who could talk to who is all jumbled. She can hear Casey and then she can't. Chuck can hear her, but why didn't she know what was going on? And then calling Casey randomly at the end? Where the hell was Casey during all that? Anyway, here goes.
Cole Barker.
It's worth pulling him out of the story abstractly. It's such a weird dynamic, after all is said and done, that I think it's important to clarify.
That being said, I'm also going to start at the end. Chuck and I are friendly with him, still, in present day. Currently, he serves as the MI6 director. Or "M" as Chuck loves to call him, like a private joke, because of Chuck's enjoyment of James Bond movies.
Chuck and I no longer work for the government the way we did when we first met Cole, but some of the government contracts Carmichael Industries handle involve working in conjunction with MI6.
And speaking of James Bond, never did any spy I encountered in my time with the CIA seem closer to the myth of Bond as Cole Barker. For the good and the bad. For the sake of comparison, I rationalize it this way. Bryce, deep inside, dreamed of being a spy like Cole was. Bryce was a good spy, but not quite in the same category. Albeit, Cole had been spying since Bryce and I were teenagers, while managing to not turn into an alcoholic like Roan Montgomery had.
Cole was an MI6 agent. The man was a hero, a highly decorated agent on Her Majesty's Secret Service. A world class spy…and a degenerate womanizer. Although, to be fair, that type of relationship, like the ones I had before I met Chuck, were the best a spy could hope for. I don't begrudge him that, even if I took the brunt of his chauvinistic advances.
In the beginning, he thought I was the same as him. That I would be interested in what he was willing to give. The same way Sam did—making the best of our lonely situation. It didn't take him long to figure out what was really going on.
In the real world, Cole Barker would be the poster boy for sexual harassment in the workplace, what not to do. But, in the spy world, it was par for the course. If Carina and he ever crossed paths, I'm sure they would have had a fantastic time together. She would have eaten him up, literally, and enjoyed every minute of him doing the same to her.
What he found instead was me, someone he found sexually attractive…who was in love with someone she was not allowed to love openly.
And because, despite his initially overbearing come-ons to me, Cole was a decent guy. Something significant happened between him breezing into and then out of our lives back then.
To be completely honest, I think sometimes if we hadn't interacted with Cole the way we did, Chuck and I wouldn't have happened the way we did. Something would have been different. Because for the first time ever, someone took Chuck seriously. Cole made him believe that despite his fear or his ineptitude, he could be a spy. The seed had been planted by me that day I had to bluntly tell Chuck the reason why I could be with Bryce but not him was because Bryce was a spy.
Cole just started watering what I'd planted.
Team Bartowski first interacted with Cole Barker because of that same old issue of different global intelligence factions not communicating with each other. Barker was MI6, and had been at that point for over ten years, and yet no one in the CIA or NSA or anyone else had any information about the fact that Barker was MI6, or working undercover, or anything like that. Instead, the NSA had faulty intel that he was Fulcrum.
About two weeks had passed since the incident in the Suburbs. Chuck was…off again. Not nearly as bad as after Christmas, but a little more withdrawn than usual. It wasn't even apparent enough that Casey noticed anything amiss, other than the usual. I didn't have enough emotional intelligence at the time to realize what Chuck had done was pull back from me, as a means to protect himself, after he had fallen further and harder after my stellar job of pulling us closer together, only to increase the pain level of the torture our association was causing.
During this time, Beckman called Casey and me for a briefing having to do with Cole. The CIA had proof that someone had dug up a CIA dump site, where Brad White's body had been disposed of after the cleaners had handled the situation at the Meadow Branch subdivision. She wanted us to find out what was taken. Casey asked if we needed to pull Chuck underground, but she declined. I tried to warn Chuck via a phone call, but he didn't answer when I called, even though I knew he was awake.
I went to check the surveillance feed, just to be safe. I ended up overhearing a conversation Chuck was having with Ellie. Ellie brought it up–specifically saying that Chuck had said something to her the other day about me not being "the one." The words were like pins, piercing my skin. Of course, it had to have been after Chuck had returned from our fake house-sitting gig. He had mentioned while we were walking Trixie that Ellie had gotten all excited, thinking the suburbs was a dry run for us. He laughed it off, but I know now how much it hurt him, all the same.
Ellie was urging him to break up with me.
Not maliciously, or out of anger. She was thinking of me, believe it or not. Saying it wasn't fair for Chuck to sort of string me along if he didn't see the relationship going anywhere. If we had been a normal couple, it would have been fine. The perfect thing for a friend to do, say something for the benefit of her friend, even if it was hard to hear.
Oh, but we weren't close to normal, and Ellie had no idea what the real story was–who was stringing who along, who was being unfair.
I tried to distract myself from that personal conversation by counting just how many times Chuck and I had broken up, both real and fake. And what Ellie thought about how many times we had broken up. Ellie knew about the time right before Lou, when he fake broke up with me. Ellie knew nothing about the real break-up that Bryce convinced Chuck to do. However, despite the fact that they were out of town, Ellie knew something was up when Jill was around again at Thanksgiving.
I had to ask myself why Ellie was such a Charah advocate, really. We seemed like a roller coaster ride to everyone else, didn't we? Morgan and Ellie and all his co-workers at the Buy More. (The very simple truth is that Ellie could see how we looked at each other, regardless of the drama that seemed to come with everything. Once she realized I was a spy, she had an existential crisis of sorts–until she realized that everything she had seen all along had been real, even if it wasn't supposed to be.)
And once again, another break up. Third time is the charm, right? Although, technically this was number four…and we weren't even done yet. Wow, that sounds so awful, now that I say it out loud. Certainly not a fairy tale, Chuck and me. Just a beautiful, happy ending to a complicated story. No Disney princess broke up with her prince charming five times before they lived happily ever after. But…there wasn't a Disney princess who was a spy first and a woman second, either. But I digress.
So after a few more times of him dodging my calls, I went to the Buy More to find him. I snuck up behind him and watched him try to not take my call.
"Screening my calls?" I asked as I came up close.
He was startled, fumbling, saying no, then yes, rambling like usual. He said there was something he wanted to talk to me about but he was waiting for the right time. He looked…sad. I knew what it was about, thanks to the surveillance, but it still hurt. Mostly because I knew how much my forced reset had dashed his hopes and hurt him.
I asked if I could buy him a frozen yogurt.
He followed me into the Orange Orange and sat down. But he didn't say anything. He watched me chop fruit. I had to prod him again about what he wanted to talk about.
For the first time ever, he wanted me to go first instead of just blurting something out while I was trying to tell him something. I told him to go first, since I knew what he wanted to say wasn't spy related, and mine was.
He started to talk, but the words he used…that he wanted to talk about "us," it was too emotional. I cut him off, asking him if he wanted to break up again.
"It's not you, it's me."
He actually said that. From what I hear, it is the gold standard for real boyfriend and/or girlfriend break up language. When it came to me, I'd never had a real boyfriend or a real break up, so that was the first time I'd ever heard it.
Casey happened to be there and gave Chuck shit for saying it to me, a "trained assassin wielding a knife," as he explained.
I continued to fix his frozen yogurt, scooping the bananas I'd sliced for him into the bowl. But I couldn't look at him. I wasn't sure I could keep my face neutral, that I wouldn't let something slip that he shouldn't see. Truth is, I don't remember everything he said, because he started by saying, "You know how much I care about you."
I did. I certainly did. No one, living or dead, had ever cared about me the way he did. Damn, it felt like someone had crumpled up my heart like a piece of scrap paper. I knew how he felt…but he had absolutely no idea that I cared about him just as much, if not more.
That was my fault, of course. Mostly because of my job, our untenable situation. If I ever let him know for real, Beckman would send me packing. I had to force all that feeling deep inside until I was choking on it sometimes, redirect things, make everything seem like it had a double meaning so it would leave him guessing.
A little over a year into the future from this point, I would have given my life for him a thousand times over, every drop of blood in my body or whisp of breath in my lungs…and he still had to ask me if I loved him. I will have said this later, in a terrible context, but I most certainly did my job too well when it came to that.
He talked about having to lie to his sister and his friends. That was nothing new. What was new was the virtual slap in the face he'd gotten from me when I told him it was just a cover, even as I stashed away every fake photo the CIA had made of us as a married couple, like I was going to decorate an imaginary playhouse somewhere.
I tried to tell him to tell everyone that we were just taking things slow, and while we enjoyed each other's company, we didn't need to label it…and who knew what the future held. I was reaching, I know.
"But that's just another lie," he said flatly. "We'll never really be together."
He sounded so defeated; I couldn't contradict him, for all the reasons that I had already told him before, everything I just mentioned. He wanted an answer, and I couldn't give him one, not the way we were.
What I wanted most was to just grab him, hold onto him the way he had held me in that Fulcrum lab, to protect him from the real world the way he had protected me from those spies. A complete reversal. But as heartbroken as I was when I admitted it, I couldn't do that. I was helpless and hopeless.
He called me on my inability to answer.
"Exactly. Exactly. Which is why I think we should break up."
"Is that what you really want?" I asked him. My voice was thready, tight, more emotional than I had any right to be in front of him. My legs started shaking, but I turned back to the counter quickly.
Sad as it is, I think Casey overheard how tenuous my control was, and interrupted us again. In his own begrudged, exasperated way of rooting for us, Casey was trying to keep me from breaking down in front of Chuck. For as seemingly unconcerned with feelings as Casey proclaimed himself to be, that was exactly what would have happened had he not interjected. My eyes were burning with unshed tears as we made our way down to Castle.
Beckman informed us that they had found a fingerprint on White's body bag. Cole Barker's. She then ordered me to get the information about what he stole from Barker using any means necessary.
A CIA/NSA euphemism for a seduction mission. No one was ordering me to have sex with Barker, but she wasn't telling me not to either. More don't ask, don't tell kind of situation. I still held firm to my pact I had with myself, that my body belonged to me and not the CIA, regardless of what any superior of mine might imply. Like I mentioned before, Carina would have fucked him in a second in that situation, and I think, being the way he was, he would have let her before he tried to find out who she worked for.
Before I came to Burbank, the last time I was even close to a situation like this was the Truffaut mission, where I was almost raped in the bathroom while Bryce was in the wine cellar getting jacked off by the same man's wife. After Chuck, there was the Lon Kirk incident, which drove Chuck crazy with both jealousy and rage at what I was asked to do as part of my job.
If I hadn't just had that conversation with Chuck, I might have been more upset. But I was smarting, torn up inside. And because of that, I don't think I cared. Pain on top of pain.
Chuck flashed, from the Fulcrum Intersect, and told us the intel was in Cole's belt buckle.
Casey made a typical dig at us…about me having to get Barker's pants off and Chuck dumping me. Good ol' Casey, rubbing salt into wounds like a pro.
Chuck and I didn't talk for the rest of the day. I argued with Casey about having to take Chuck with us at all, but we needed the Intersect to flash on Barker's contact, if at all possible. Chuck sitting it out was not an option, unfortunately. Casey was posing as the bartender and Chuck and I were seated at the bar, but not together. My back was angled away, so we looked like strangers seated side by side.
Casey was making jokes, distasteful as always. I wasn't happy with what I was supposed to do, but I knew I could do it. I did, however, have this low, uncomfortable rumbling inside me, that everything was just…wrong. I thought it was Chuck, but I couldn't shake it. I was in pain, but too disconnected from myself to realize what was wrong.
Barker walked in. Chuck was worried, looking for alternatives. I showed him my gun and told him about the safe word, which would alert Casey that I needed help.
I approached Barker with the intention of picking him up.
He was really a bastard during that conversation, I have to say. He was trying to come across a certain way I guess, scaring off someone who was just trying to pick him up like a normal girl, but at the same time drawing someone in. We thought he was Fulcrum. He was actually undercover, and thought we might be Fulcrum…or someone else. All that spy stuff complicates it all til it makes my head spin.
I took his dark, sleazy banter in stride.
"I'm not a nice guy," Cole smirked as he eyed my legs.
"Good, 'cause I'm not into nice guys."
"Really? Why is that?" he asked, scooting closer to me. I could smell the alcohol on his breath.
"Well, all they want to do is talk about their feelings and emotions, and sometimes what a woman really wants is a man who acts."
All I can say is I must have been even in more pain than I realized, because I knew Chuck was listening and that was a horrible dig at him, hurtful in a way I just had never been to him before. Just doing my job. Sure.
Cole asked me up to his room.
The elevator door hadn't even shut yet and he already had his hands on me. He stood in front of me, pinning me against the wall. One hand on my waist, the other on my thigh. And then we were kissing.
The last time I had been kissed was by Bryce on the dance floor at Von Hayes' party. Before that, it was Chuck, in front of Roan Montgomery.
It surprised me, how easily that veil came up, my training kicking in though it had been years since I'd done anything like this. I was kissing him, he was kissing me…but it was like I wasn't really there. It had nothing to do with me as a woman, a person. My mind was on my mission. His belt buckle. That was it.
We were barely through the door of his hotel room and things were hot and heavy. Off came his jacket. I reached for his pants, thinking only about the belt buckle. He countered that with his hands all over me. He flung my purse onto the floor, out of my reach. I pushed him over the back of the sofa and we tumbled onto the floor, with him straddling me. He tossed my purse away again.
We were on our feet and I backed him against the wall. I tried to go for my purse again, and he grabbed me hard, pulling me up off my feet and slamming me back against the wall. I had to wrap my legs around him to steady myself. He pulled my dress off, over my head, with one hand while he was still holding me up with the other.
It felt like everything was moving too fast, like I had let the situation get out of hand. I reached for the belt one more time. He pulled it off and tied my hands together over my head with it. I had the belt, technically, but I no longer had the upper hand, wondering if at any point I ever had. I used the safe word, praying Casey could make it before I ended up being raped or worse.
Of course, I had no idea that Chuck had flashed on Cole's Fulcrum contacts and Casey had taken off after them, leaving Chuck alone at the bar. Chuck on the other hand, thought he was listening to Cole fuck me and had to take the earpiece out. I missed all of that chatter, seeing as my earpiece had fallen out in all the slamming around Cole and I were doing.
I know, it was stupid and dangerous for him to do that. But I also know what it was like to hear that for real, thanks to Casey, and no matter how badly he hurt me or how angry I was, he did not deserve to be tortured like that.
Cole ordered the champagne. I went for my purse again while he was on the phone, but time number four of me trying to get to my purse was no longer subtle. He grabbed me from behind, hard, and pushed me away. He got the gun out of my purse and pulled it on me.
Where the hell was Casey?
I tried to stall, play dumb, telling Cole to slow down, that things were getting a little too dangerous.
He cocked the gun and asked me who I worked for.
My blood turned to ice water. Was this it? How my life would end? Shot to death in a hotel room while I was half naked? I never pictured dying peacefully in my bed as an old woman, I'll at least say that.
My life didn't flash before my eyes. Only Chuck. What I wished I had said this morning, what I wanted him to know before I died.
He was here, in the hotel. What would happen to him when Casey found my body?
Just then, a knock on the door…and Chuck's voice. Chuck.
It was just the distraction I needed. Cole looked away, and I kicked the gun out of his hand. Without the weapon, even with my hands bound, Cole was no match for me. As my father had always said, everyone has their skillset. Mine just happened to be taking down large men. They were easier, because I was trained to use their body weight against them. In no time, I had Cole on the floor and I had the gun.
Chuck kicked the door in.
I only thought about that later, what it was he really did. Cole was MI6, sure, but if he hadn't been, Chuck would have saved my life. He heard me struggling, knowing I was already in trouble because of the safe word…and he kicked the door in. My hero once again.
Seeing me in my bra and panties was too much for him, though. He had seen me like that before, but he had been with Jill at the time. A lot had happened in between then and now.
I kept my gun trained on Cole while I grabbed my dress from the floor. I handed the gun to Chuck, giving him a silent look, hoping he knew he needed to act confident and not freak out. Look like he knew what he was doing.
I put on the dress and then my coat in record time, then took the gun back.
"Thank you," I said to Chuck, hoping he knew it was for everything, for saving my life once again.
Chuck was a wreck. Disquieted is a good word. What he'd heard, what he'd seen, and what he'd done were all weighing on him.
"Where is Casey?" I asked, now wondering why, after the safe word, Chuck came instead.
"Somewhere," Chuck replied wisely. He flared his eyes open. Cole's contacts had showed up.
I called for back up, but I no longer had my earpiece to communicate with Casey. Chuck had tried to contact him as well, but got no answer. The CIA was sending a chopper to the roof to extract us.
Chuck and I took Cole from his room and to the roof of the hotel.
We weren't on the roof for five minutes before I realized the helicopter we had heard was most definitely not CIA.
Fulcrum.
We dove for cover. But I was worried. Outgunned, outmatched.
I made a split decision. I called Casey on the SOS line, unsecured but my only option at this point. Then I moved away from Chuck, and consequently Cole, to draw their fire.
Beckman needed to know what Cole was up to. I needed that information to get to Beckman.
Without me, she would need to know as much as possible…to protect Chuck from Fulcrum.
That was all that mattered, that Chuck was safe. I didn't look back, just turned and started running… praying somehow that Chuck stayed put, even if he had to watch me be killed.
