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: Thanks so much for the reviews and for reading, y'all! Enjoy this chapter!
Disclaimer: I don't own Chuck or its characters, and any similarities in this fic to any corporate entities are just coincidence... shh.
His pile of kids books in hand and a rolled up blueprint under the other, Chuck Bartowski made the trek from the front door of his comic book shop to the front door of Castle in the Air Books for the first time in a few days.
It hadn't been purposeful. He'd been consumed with a project outside of his time that was spent helping customers and getting work done at Ashcan. He knew most people would call him crazy, tell him he was wasting his time, that there was no way for a small business David to defeat such a massive Goliath like Cadabra.
But it was in his nature to hope, and with that hope came a soul-deep need to fight for what was right. And the right thing was keeping Del Rey's flourishing community of small businesses alive. They couldn't do that unless they knocked this Cadabra venture off of its foundations before they even opened.
And that meant he hadn't been getting much sleep.
He probably looked like he'd crawled out of a swamp as he pushed into Castle in the Air Books on Wednesday right at ten in the morning, sharp. She was still pulling up the blinds, in the front right corner of the store, and she turned to look at him, finishing the last of said blinds, eyebrows raised in surprise at seeing him.
"Good morning," she said quietly, a hint of a smile on her face.
And he was struck by it. Seeing her for the first time since Sunday, when they'd had such a nice chat out at the picnic table in front of their stores, and the discussion he and Ellie'd had about her in between then and now, the startling, maybe even concerning realization in him that Ellie didn't get to know about (but she probably did anyway)… He did have a crush. And it was singing in him now as he looked at her, with her braids, one hanging down from behind each ear, her slightly oversized zip-up hoodie with some book quote on the back of it, her colorful sneakers and the black capris that covered her long legs.
She turned to face him better, the hoodie slipping off of her shoulder cutely. "Everything…okay?" she asked in the awkward silence.
Shit, he hadn't meant to stare or be awkward.
"Morning," he rushed out. "I need help and I would've gone to Martha but her kid's been sick and I know she's got her plate full right now." He walked over to her front counter.
"Oh, so I'm your second choice?"
"That's not what I meant and you know it."
She snickered.
She had books piled on the counter here and there, along with receipts with people's named on them.
"Uh…"
"What's that under your arm?" she asked, coming around to poke at the rolled up blueprint. He felt almost silly now that he was standing here next to her and the adrenaline of working on all of this by himself for a few days and being on a roll with it was starting to wear off.
"Oh. Um, I can—I'll show you. I need a…flat surface."
"Well, this won't do. Yesterday was a new release day and of course two publishers didn't get me the books in time. They came this morning right as I pulled into the parking lot. Now I've got all these preorders on my hands and…"
"Crap, I'm interrupting you. You've got lots of work to do. Sorry. I can come back…"
"I can handle it," she said with a tilt of her shoulders, smirking a little. "I wanna know what that is." She pointed again. "Here, c'mon. I actually unfolded the table in the break room finally. Cleared out a few more of the boxes back there," she said with a huff, leading him into the back.
"Heeeey, we love to see progress," he cheered, earning a snort.
She slapped her hand down onto the table, but a puff of dust came up. Sending him a sheepish look, she rushed back towards what looked like the bathroom, emerging with a dust towel and Pledge, then made quick work of cleaning off the top of the table. "There." Setting it to the side, she gestured at it. "Your work surface."
"Thank you. Much appreciated." He set down the books at the edge of the table.
"Oh no. Are you returning those? I have a strict no return policy for books that have been read. You can exchange or get a gift card, though."
He made a face, almost offended. "Excuse me? I am not returning these books. They are mine. I brought them so that I had them on hand for when I gush to the bookseller about how much fun I had reading them."
Oh wow. God.
The way she beamed at him, bouncing a little on her toes, her blue eyes filled with a light, her whole face actually. She seemed almost breathless.
And now he couldn't breathe.
Maybe Ellie was onto something about this girl being special.
"You liked them? Wait, you read all three already?!"
"Oh yeah. They were the perfect break for my brain from all this…Cadabra shit. I dove headfirst into sky pirates and spy stuff and it was fun, some of it was even funny. So…thank you. But I'll gush some more about them in a second." He took the blueprint and unrolled it on top of the table, using each of the books to hold it down, but one corner remained, rolling up annoyingly.
Sarah acted fast, setting the Pledge canister on it.
"Thanks," he breathed, smiling up at her. She was standing close, looking down at the images on the—Right, he needed to focus on that.
Reaching up to scratch the back of his head, he thumped his finger on the blueprint. "I put this together. It's the shopping center. Here's the main office where Casey and his admin staff are. Our maintenance guy Chen's office is here. Our security lady, Pauline, and her security headquarters. Annnd…" He pulled back to poke the blueprint. "This is where we're standing right now. I should put a little marker there that says YOU ARE HERE. Heh."
Why was he nervous now? He shifted his weight, swallowing hard and watching as she leaned forward, her palms braced on his shopping center blueprint.
"This is pretty cool. You made this?"
"Mhm. Dimensions are all correct too but that's just…me being a perfectionist. Ahem." He shook himself, then slapped his palm right in the middle of the shopping center. "This is our shared space, yeah? With the grass, the benches, the playground, the trees, the nice walk through it, the cobblestones over here. Why don't we ever use this?"
She looked up at him with wide, questioning eyes. "I don't know. Do you never use it? I'm new here."
"Right." He chuckled. "True. Sorry. But no. Since I got a few years ago, nobody's ever used it. I mean, none of the businesses. People come in and use it, they eat out here and their kids play on the playground, they walk their dogs, yadda yadda. But we, as businesses taking up the storefronts in this shopping center, have never used this space to do something…something…big. And-And communityesque. You know?"
"Like what?" she asked.
"A huge party."
"A party. Just a random…party? With, like…dancing and stuff?"
He didn't mean to ignore her question, but his brain was already going a mile a minute as he leaned down beside her to peer over the blueprint, their shoulders touching as he poked at different spots in the huge middle quad of the shopping center. "We can invite a band or something, set up a stage here. Something everybody likes, like funk. Or Martha can DJ. Or both! People can be right here, listening, dancing, whatever. And then each shop gets their own spot that correlates to where their shop is in the actual center buildings. Here, surrounding the space. Like, little booths with a selection of our products on display. We sell our wares, we promote, we-we get to know the community, the community gets to know us…"
Chuck felt her gaze on the side of his face as he asked, "How many weeks do we have 'til Small Business Saturday?"
She was silent for a long moment, and he finally turned to look at her. She jumped a little, quickly looking away, seeming nervous almost as she cleared her throat, her cheeks pink. She tucked a bit of hair that escaped one of her braids away from her face. "I don't…know what you are talking about."
"Oh. What I mean is this can be our Small Business Saturday celebration. We have it on that day."
"Yeah. Um… What is that?"
His jaw fell open. He couldn't help it. "Small…Business Saturday? It—What? What?! Sarah, you don't know what Sma—Oh. Wow. No, it's okay," he said, shaking himself. He was floored, but he needed to not alienate her right now. "I've got you. We'll bring you in on the Small Business Saturday loop and all will be fine."
"Oookaay…"
"Small Business Saturday is the day right after Black Friday. You know what that is, right?" She glared, crossing her arms. "Just checking. Ahem. It's the small business answer to the corporate capitalistic mess that is Black Friday. Okay cool, you got all your half-off TV sets at Walmart, congrats. To offset that, the next day, you better go to your favorite locally owned small business for a sandwich and some coffee. Or go to your favorite…I dunno, record store, buy a bunch of vinyls. Go to your independent bookstore," he said, gesturing around them. "Indie comic shop." He pointed towards his shop.
"I really should've known about this, huh…? As a small business owner…?" She winced.
"Probably. But don't worry, I won't tell anyone and we'll pretend you knew the whole time."
"Gee, thanks," she said with a snort, sending him an amused look. "So it's the Saturday after Thanksgiving, that's about…two and a half weeks. You want to do all of this in two and a half weeks? That's madness."
"It is, isn't it?" He turned to grin at her. "Good thing I've got help."
"What, me? Wow. Don't even ask, just assume. I'm not sure this would be a very fruitful business relationship. Remember how things started out?" She was clearly teasing him, and he liked that. A lot.
"Me being a giant butthole and blaming you for Casey being a dickhead?" She laughed. "Not one of my more mature moments, but I feel like I've gotten a little better since then."
"Maybe."
He paused. "Have I not?"
She snorted, shaking her head. "No, I mean…maybe I'll help. This is a shit ton of work. We're gonna need more than just us. Like, for instance, we need to bring this to Casey and his staff too. Maintenance is gonna need to be in on it. We'll need pros hanging up pretty lights. It's after Thanksgiving so that's appropriate Christmas decorations time. We'll need to get those up."
"Oh, shit. See? I hadn't thought of that. You're already being helpful."
She sent him a wan smile, shaking her head. "Everyone will need to be involved. Casey's gonna hafta reconvene everyone."
"Get the troops back on base. Give 'em their briefing."
"This isn't a bad idea, Chuck, but the timing is nearing impossible on this thing. Maybe we can get it up for mid-December and make it a Christmas thing?" He was already shaking his head. "Why not?"
"Sarah, we have to take the fight to Cadabra. And we have to do it, like, immediately. If the doors of that brick-and-mortar open, we've lost."
Sarah gaped at him. "Are you serious? You're trying to stop it from even opening? You…do realize how pie in the sky that sounds, right?"
"Says the person who opened a bookstore called Castle in the Air." She wrinkled up her nose and seemed to give him that point. "I know, Sarah, you have a whole business to run. On your own. No employees. Just you. And that's a shit ton of pressure and stress for one person. And now I wanna add this to it. But if we don't stop Cadabra before it opens, I don't know what this shopping center's gonna look like when we all start dropping like flies."
She sucked in a deep breath. "This is absolutely insane."
"Yes. It is."
"But something like this for the community, for families and kids, for everyone, all walks of life…we can put out ads all over LA, everywhere…" Her tongue darted out to wet her lips thoughtfully. "This is exactly what small businesses are all about. They're the backbone of a community. We show this community what we have to offer which is something they will never get from Cadabra."
He slapped the table and pointed at her. "Brilliant. Yes. Exactly."
"It'll be a huge middle finger to the shitty Cadabra project a few blocks over."
"Biggest middle finger to corporate America ever."
"We need to get this idea to Casey. Immediately."
"Martha first, then Casey. Martha's pragmatic but not as grumpy as he is. If she thinks we're nuts, I'll probably start…wondering if maybe I should be committed for even thinking of this."
She giggled. "Okay, deal. We can—Or…well…you. I'll have to sit this out. I've got a store to run. Preorders to process and call."
"Need some help?"
She furrowed her brow. "What?"
"Flint, Anna, and Morgan are all over in my shop right now. I might've over-scheduled by accident." He winced. "And I don't wanna send any of 'em home. They all know how to call customers about orders. Simple enough task."
"Oh. Chuck, I-I…can't. That's not—"
"Sh. The small business better bureau of…rules and regulations doesn't need to know I'm sharing an employee with you." He put his finger to his lips. "They'll never know."
She smirked, rolling her eyes. "God damn it. I could use a little help."
He bit back the response on the tip of his tongue. She did say she needed to get better at accepting people's help. But saying it out loud would be condescending, so he didn't. Instead, he pulled out his phone and called his own shop.
Flint answered.
"Hey. How would you feel about popping next door to this super cool bookstore and helping the owner call customers about their preorders being in?"
"And getting out of this freaking dump for a bit? Deal."
He laughed. "Thanks, Flint."
"Be over in a sec."
He hung up. "Flint's on their way now."
She sent him a look, sighing, and then she smiled and shook her head. "This is…kind. Thank you. I'll pay you back somehow." He opened his mouth to argue but she cut him off. "Not money. Just…some other way. You scratch my back, I scratch yours…sort of thing. Okay?"
Chuck nodded finally. "Okay. Deal."
"Good. Thanks. Now go take all this to Martha. I have work to do." The bell on the front door jingled.
"SANTA'S ELF IS HERE!"
Sarah and Chuck both cracked up at the sound of Flint's voice echoing through the bookstore.
"Me and Flint have work to do," she corrected, her eyes sparkling. And she squeezed his arm gratefully, before ducking out of the break room to give Flint their task.
Chuck could only stand there, the delicious warmth from where she'd touched his arm slowly pooling through him.
}o{
With Flint's help, Sarah got through the piles of new releases she had to receive, preorders for customers, running them in her POS system and notifying them, arranging the new releases on her new release table across from the front counter, in about two hours.
She was sliding the last special order onto the shelf behind the counter when Flint spoke up again.
"So… You and my boss, huh?"
Sarah froze, slowly turning to face the comic book seller, fixing a mask over her features in the meantime. "Me and…your boss?"
What did that mean? Like she didn't know. Sure, Carina had seen whatever the hell she wanted to see because that was Carina. But were other people making assumptions about this…situation in which Chuck kept popping over, and…oh God, she kept popping over to his comic book shop to talk to him, too.
"Yeah." Flint shrugged their shoulders and leaned against the counter, putting the phone back in its cradle now that the phone calls had been made. "You two seem to be leading the charge against the Candelabastards. Taking the fight to 'em."
A relieved burst of air came out of her and she tried to disguise it as a chuckle. "Right. Yeah. He sort of just stormed in here with his blueprints and sent you here to help me out. Hard to say no under that kind of pressure."
"Well… blueprints. Somebody brings blueprints, you say yes. Whatever it is, those are blueprints you've got rolled up there, so…yes."
Sarah laughed. "Pretty much. Hey, thank you for helping me. I'm releasing you of your duties to this bookstore you don't even work at." She winced. "Maybe I can get you a coffee or something to thank you at some point."
They seemed to almost blush under their freckles then, and they cut a dismissive hand through the air. "Nah, you don't owe me anything. Boss man is paying me to be here. It was nice to get out of the comic book shop for a few hours." They made a face and Sarah sent them an intrigued look. They sighed. "It's so weird being in there with Anna and Morgan. There's this really bizarre…tension there. Like they push each other away and then like get these intense freaky looks on their faces and stare at each other across the room, and then it's back to icy again. It actively freaks me out."
"Oh God, that sounds extremely awkward. Are they…dating?"
"No." Flint scoffed, stepping around the counter and rolling their eyes. "I wish they'd just go out on a date or bang or something so that the rest of us don't have to walk through their weird uncomfortable electric current."
That made Sarah laugh. "Well, you have my sympathy. But the coffee offer still stands. I mean it."
"Thanks, that's really nice of you." They blushed a little again, shrugging one shoulder. "I'm gonna go back and hopefully not find my coworkers making out behind the Spider-Man promo display."
"Good luck. Thanks, Flint!"
"Anytime."
They waved and ducked out of her bookstore.
Another customer came in a few minutes later as Sarah updated her staff pick page on the website, a clear bag of comics already in her hand as she pushed in. Sarah smiled at her. "Hi!"
"Hi. Wow, this is a cute bookstore! I didn't even know it was here!"
Sarah felt a wince try to force its way onto her face but she fought it back, instead smiling harder. Cute? Come on.
"Yeah, just opened, um, almost two months ago?"
"Oh. Cool! This is my comic shop over here. I live down the street." She started looking at the front promo Sarah set up to highlight indigenous authors. "I was at Ashcan to get my pull-list and the owner asked me if I liked books. And I was like, 'Whaaat?' You know, kind of random someone in a comic book shop just asks a question like that. But then he told me about his bookstore and I seriously, like, didn't even know. Space cadet," she rambled.
Sarah cut in. "Oh yeah? He said that?"
"Yeah. He said you carry really cool stuff." She gestured to the promotion. "Already a big fan of this."
"Thanks. Feels important during this month to remind folks of history and to encourage them to step into other people's shoes. Reading different perspectives."
"You hear of Frances Lightfoot? She writes really gnarly horror and it always takes place around reservations."
"I have some of her stuff. Want me to show you?"
"Oh hell yes."
But as Sarah took her to the horror section, flanked by other genre fiction like science fiction, fantasy, and romance, another handful of customers walked into the front door, talking amongst themselves and laughing. She peered over her shelf and smiled. "Hey guys! Welcome!"
There was a chorus of hi's and they began to do their browsing.
The horror fan customer made an excited sound. "I don't have any of these. Okay, sorry, you're gonna have to reorder some Frances Lightfoot. I'm cleaning you out."
Sarah laughed. "Please. Take 'em. I have no problem reordering stuff because it's popular."
"I'm gonna keep looking. Oh God, this is worse than the comic shop. I go crazy in there but there's so much stuff I need in here."
Laughing again, she excused herself with a "Have fun" and headed for the group that just came in. "Hi. Anybody need help finding anything? Need me to point you to a specific section?"
"We're just looking," the girl in the group said.
But then one of the guys held up a bag of comics. She saw The Sandman was written across the top of the comic facing towards her. "You got any Neil Gaiman?"
"Is this a bookstore?" Sarah asked with a scoff. "Please. You can't have a bookstore with no Gaiman. This way."
She showed him to Gaiman in the fantasy section, but then paused. "You just came from the comic book shop next door, huh?"
"Yeah, we were in there and they told us there's a bookstore here."
She'd had a feeling that was the case. And maybe she needed to rethink her ideas about help, accepting help from others, and what that meant for her ability to claim she'd done all this on her own—whether that was even all that important in the grand scheme of things or not.
But that was something for her to dwell on later.
Because right at that moment, she had customers to help.
}o{
Chuck was suddenly regretting not somehow finagling to get Sarah out of her bookstore for a few minutes to sit here next to him and pitch this to John Casey, King of Grump Mountain.
Casey liked Sarah. Well, he wasn't sure Casey liked anyone at all, but he at least didn't make annoyed lip curls plus disgruntled sounds at her the way he did at Chuck.
Sarah was clearly super smart, as well. She seemed like a problem solver, too, the way she immediately came up with that idea about Christmas lights at the Small Business Saturday festival. If she were sitting here now next to him, he'd have way more leeway with their landlord.
"You wanna host a…festival?" Casey curled his lip. "Have I died and gone to hell?"
"Not yet!" Chuck waited a beat, merely getting an unmoved, narrow-eyed look. "That…was a…joke. I'm just gonna—Let's move on." He cleared his throat, pointing at the blueprint. He didn't have as big of a surface as he'd had in the break room at the back of Castle in the Air Books and Casey didn't seem to feel the need to help him pin down the corners, so he was trying to keep it open and point at the same time.
He felt like an idiot.
"So in the middle here, let's call it our quad, just to make it easier. In the quad, we have booths for each of the businesses in here. Just right out in front of our actual storefronts, but in the grass, you know? So that everyone milling around, celebrating, having fun, can buy our product, our comic books, books without pictures, food, vinyl, et cetera. We'll have live music. Martha said she'll DJ and she has some ins with a few bands. She can get a good band to come. We'd just have to provide a little stage. I was thinking here. There's a lot of room here and people can dance in front of it. We get some tables and chairs, just nice folding stuff, you know? People can sit and eat, hang out, enjoy themselves. It's us…throwing a Small Business Saturday festival…showing the community what we have to offer. This is stuff Cadabra isn't gonna give them. They don't care about this community the way we do." He thumped his pointer finger against the blueprint a few times. "This shows the community that we're worth fighting for."
"Put the blueprint away, I can't stand watching you wrestle with it anymore," Casey snapped.
Chuck sat back against his chair and let the blueprints roll themselves up again with a swish and a slap. "Sure. No problem."
And then the older man just stared at him for what had to be close to a minute. Chuck thought he was sweating even though it was only in the upper fifties outside and Casey didn't seem to have the heater on in his office. Did he thrive on being uncomfortable or something? Chuck wouldn't put it past him.
He squirmed, swallowing hard.
"Aw shit, let's do it." Casey already seemed tired as he pinched the bridge of his nose. "Small Business Saturday Festival. Fuck me, what am I even doing? I can't believe I'm agreeing to this."
"We gotta do something," Chuck said with a shrug.
"Hmng. I know. I don't have as much faith in people as you do. People are gonna come to this festival and stomp on our grass and dance and be…annoyingly happy and, oh God, Christmas-y too. And then they're gonna forget about us the next fuckin' day. Mark my words." This guy was such a ray of sunshine, wasn't he? But then he shook his head. "But I'm not gonna get run over by that commie Geoff Frezos. He can kiss my ass."
Casey really needed to read up on the definition of communist if he thought Frezos and Cadabra were communism at play, but Chuck decided he didn't want to be the one that told the landlord that. Not if he wanted to make it to his thirtieth birthday.
"I'll get my staff read up on this and we'll get the ball rolling. On the stage especially," Casey said, climbing up to his feet and grabbing his phone, slamming it to his ear. "Yeah, get Chen and Pauline in here," he said to his assistant. "I wanna talk to 'em." He hung up again. "We'll get an email sent out from management to all of our tenants about Small Business Saturday." He paused and looked at Chuck carefully. "You're workin' on this with Walker from the bookstore?"
"Yeah. She agreed to be my partner in this madcap plan."
"A'right. Good. That makes me feel better about it. If it were just you, I'd be worried."
Chuck was so relieved John Casey was agreeing to the whole thing that he decided not to be offended by that last crack.
He gathered up his stuff and moved to the door and turned to look at the older man. "Mister Casey?" The landlord looked up at him impatiently. "Thanks for agreeing to this. You…think we can really do this in two and a half weeks?"
"Please. You think I hired my people because they were incompetent? Inept? Of course we can do it. You just hold up your end o' the bargain. We'll throw the money at it."
Fuck yes.
"You got it."
He burst out of the office and practically skipped across the quad towards the bookstore.
}o{
"Empanadas food truck right here…" Chuck was saying, pointing towards the corner with his pencil. "We'll have to block a few parking spaces off so that it can slip in there."
But she was too focused on scanning through her phone for lights to pay much attention. "I can't decide. White lights? Or do we want colors? White is kind of refined, festive, but doesn't necessarily give off Christmas vibes the way the colors would."
Chuck pursed his lips. "Sarah, I say this with all the respect in the world for how deeply you care about this task being done perfectly… you've been picking out these lights for two hours. Your phone battery has to be nearly drained by now from all the websites you've gone on to try to find the perfect lights for this festival."
She slowly lifted her eyes to his, storm cloud eyebrows turned down, her jaw hard. "This is important."
"It is. It is very important. Don't get me wrong. I just…think that there are other things we need you to do and maybe we can just pick the lights and order 'em so they're here in time?" He winced, as if he was ready to run if she decided to attack him.
She looked down at her phone and rolled her eyes. "Ugh. Fine. We'll do the small white lights. We are gonna have a giant tree, we can put a string of colored lights around it."
"See? You did that fantastically. And quickly."
"Don't be condescending."
Chuck cleared his throat. "Sorry. Um, but if we have the food trucks here and here, we can switch the booths around, right? Do you think Mel's Creamery would mind if we pull 'em from their spot and stick 'em here on the other side of the quad?"
"It's ice cream, so it depends on if they have the right equipment to have their ice cream outside of the store. It'll melt even on a cold day."
"Oh. Damn it. Good point." He wrote in his notebook with his pencil, his tongue poking through his lips as he concentrated. "I'm gonna talk to Mel's and see what they need to make this festival work for them."
"If people have to cross the quad for some of the food that'll be here, I think it's okay. We don't necessarily need all the food in one corner." She shrugged. "It isn't like they have to battle the whole Pacific Crest Trail to get from one side to the other; it isn't that big."
"Okay, fair. Maybe we'll just keep Mel's inside if they don't have a portable freezer cart thing. We won't have everyone out on the grass maybe." He frowned. "I wanted everybody out here. What if nobody goes into Mel's because they aren't out here and they don't get the benefits of this festival?"
It was actually…kind of adorable that he was so concerned about this. But she had also sensed over the last week and a half of getting things set up—getting the vendors to agree, plotting who would go where, hiring food trucks, cleaning up the quad—Chuck Bartowski wasn't great at shifting a plan once he'd already figured something out. He'd added everyone onto a map of the quad and he'd been really proud of it, but it was looking like that map wasn't going to work for everyone, adjustments had to be made to make folks happy, to make things work better, and she felt like he was a little frustrated and put-out by that.
She didn't judge him for it. Everyone had their own little scruples. This was apparently his.
Who was she to judge when he was admittedly right in that she'd spent multiple hours on these lights? Maybe she was a perfectionist…
"Lights are handled. They'll be delivered to Casey's office in three days," she said, finally putting her phone away.
"You need a charger for your phone? I have a wireless one in my office in the shop," he teased. She got a toothy grin from him.
"Shut up." She stuck her tongue out, amused in spite of herself. But then she caught sight of the large delivery truck with their rented tarps, tents, display cases, and everything else people needed to bring their respective businesses outside onto the lawn. "Ah. There's all of our stuff. I'm positive Casey and Chen will need some help."
"Casey needing help? Never."
She laughed, knowing he'd never say something like that where the other man could hear him out of soul-deep fear. She didn't judge him for that, either.
By the time they trekked to where Casey and Chen backed the truck up to the quad as far as it could go so that they could begin unloading, the two men were already starting to heft the stuff at the edge down and onto the lawn.
"Need help?" Chuck asked.
"Not from you, toothpick arms."
He turned an annoyed look on her, rolling his eyes. She could only send him a commiserating look back. For what it was worth, his arms didn't seem toothpickish to her, but she still hadn't had them around her yet. She'd only…thought about it. Admittedly.
Sarah's phone bleeped in her pocket then and she grabbed it quickly, answering it. "Hey. You need me?"
"Yeah, someone wants to place a special order and I'm still not…sure how to do that on this complicated system…" Flint responded.
"Coming now. Thanks, Flint!"
She hung up and reached out to squeeze Chuck's forearm. Only she missed and her hand slid around his fingers instead. He turned to look at her, the golden pools of his eyes wider than usual. She hadn't meant to take his hand. Oh.
She went with it because she really had no choice now. She squeezed his fingers and he squeezed back. "Flint needs me. I'll be right back."
"Go, go. We got this."
Nodding, she jogged away from him and headed to the shop, hurrying her pace and full-on running, doing her best to ignore the buzzing in her hand. He'd been out here in the cold for hours now, since very early this morning, right alongside her. And while her hands were like ice at this point, he'd been warm. Toasty. She found herself thinking about how good it would feel to have her cold hands clasped between his warm ones, like there was a cocoon of heat around them.
She hurried into her store and got behind the desk. "Thank you, Flint. Sorry," she said to the customer. "We're setting up for the Small Business Saturday Del Rey festival out here and Flint's been kind enough to look after my store for me."
"Oh, a festival?" the woman asked, a toddler propped on her hip. The toddler was well-behaved, just chilling there. Although there was some kind of electronic device in his hands so maybe that was why. "When did you say it was?"
"Small Business Saturday. It's the Saturday after Thanksgiving. A way for our small businesses to spend time with our community, have some fun, celebrate the holidays." She almost bit her tongue, but she changed her mind and said, "And let those Cadabra people know that they'll never replace the importance of small businesses to a community."
The woman scoffed. "I heard about that. I always go to city council meetings—well, when I can. They want to build some awful warehouse near where my mother-in-law's home is near the reserve. So that they can stock that stupid retail store that's going in a block away. I'm so fed up."
Sarah felt emboldened as she leaned in. "Exactly. And we never know what kind of mess they put into our marina when they build warehouses like that. We're taking the fight to them, though."
"Well, sign me up. We'll be out of town for Thanksgiving but we get back Friday night. Maybe we can come see this festival on Saturday. Huh, Freddie? You wanna see the festival?"
Freddie didn't look up from his device.
Sarah helped the woman special order a few picture books for Freddie, and then she also wanted five copies of the new Lahiri book for a book club she hosted with her friends. "I'm just gonna buy all of our books here and they can pay me back. It's easier for everyone, and I'm putting my money into a small business."
"Thank you. I love that idea." She quickly finished up the order, took her payment, and handed her the receipt, as well as a bag with the books she'd purchased off of Sarah's shelves.
The woman actually got Freddie to say goodbye to the nice "ladies" and ducked out of the store with a wave.
Sarah turned an apologetic look on Flint who merely shrugged. "It happens. Usually in the other direction, actually. I'm fine." They quickly changed the subject then, seeming genuinely not upset. "You hear her talk about a book club?"
"I did. I absolutely did. And yes, it got my wheels turning."
"Just saying, if you got a fold-out table and some chairs, there's that corner towards the back near your kids section… a book club could meet there. Maybe five or six people?"
"Took the words right out of my head," Sarah said, excited. "It would need a theme, maybe? Or we could just start with general fiction." She pursed her lips. "Would you be interested in a book club?"
"Oh yes!"
Sarah beamed. "Ties right in with this community push we're doing here, doesn't it?"
"Small businesses are a meeting place for a community. Safe space for people to congregate, meet friends, talk books and comics. Cadabra isn't gonna host a book club, pfft."
"You're exactly right! Have you guys done anything like this at Ashcan? People meeting to talk comics?"
"It'd be a short meeting unless you made it about graphic novels."
Sarah pursed her lips, her brain going a mile a minute. "D'you think Chuck would come to my book club?"
"No." Flint laughed. "Sorry, I just—He is who he is."
"He read three kids books I talked him into buying a few weeks ago. Like that." She snapped her fingers.
"Seriously?" Flint seemed surprised. And then they got a certain look on their face that Sarah couldn't read. "Huh. That's interesting."
Sarah decided to make a retreat. "Hey, I'm gonna get back out there…if you're okay sticking here for a little while longer?"
"Um, absolutely. Morgan and Anna are being weird again today. Not that I wanna abandon Luce or anything, but she's middle-aged and has seen shit, so she's better conditioned to deal with their nonsense. At least that's how I'm making myself feel like less of an asshole." Flint shrugged, making Sarah crack up.
By the time Sarah got back to the truck, the men seemed to be arguing over how to get some of the pieces of wood paneling for the toy shop's set-up out of the back.
"Well, it isn't my fault they loaded it in the wrong order," Chen was saying, throwing his hands up. "Do we need the back paneling now? Can't we wait 'til we get back to it?"
"Nah," Chuck responded, shaking his head. He was standing inside of the truck, his arms crossed. "There are, like, thirty shops' worth of things in this semi, dude. This is going to take us days to unload and get set up. And the plan was to systematically work our way around in a square, starting with Toys Central. We need those back panels for the display."
"You're a string bean," Casey said. "Why don't you squeeze in there and snag 'em?"
Chuck sighed. "Just because you call me a toothpick and a string bean, doesn't mean I am either of those things, Casey. I physically can't fit back there. My shoulders won't fit. I'm also six foot four."
Sarah could feel him starting to lose his patience, and for as consistently chill and warm and sweet as Chuck was, for how much guff he took from John Casey pretty often, mostly letting it roll off his shoulders, she didn't think he was working with a long fuse today. Again, she did not blame him for it.
She decided to step in.
"Let me try to get back there. You're all taller and bigger than me." She went to the back of the truck. She could've used the ramp, sure, but she instead let Chuck reach down, snag hold of her hand, and help her hoist herself up into the truck with him.
Maybe they held onto one another's hands for a little longer than necessary as she snuck past him and looked into the tiny crevice she would have to sneak through. "What am I looking for in here, gents?"
"Large flat wooden panels," Chuck responded, finally letting her slip her fingers from his. "They have tape on 'em labeled Toys Central. You can sorta see 'em from here."
He grabbed a flashlight from his pocket and flashed it through the crevice to the front wall that was pressed against the truck cabin. "Right there. See 'em?"
"I see it. If I don't make it out, tell your sister the books are hers." She sent him a teasing look over her shoulder as she carefully squeezed between wooden displays stacked on their sides.
"I thought you were gonna say to tell her you love her," he teased back.
"That, too."
She heard him laughing as she snuck into the ever-shrinking crevice. And for a long minute, it felt like the deeper she got into the container, the further away her destination became. Like she had plunged into the Twilight Zone.
But then her fingers brushed against one of the wooden planks they needed and she snagged it, pulling it into her grip. Luckily it wasn't as heavy as she'd been expecting it to be, so she was able to squeeze in against it and push it through the crevice towards the men. Carefully. Doing her best not to scratch it.
"We got one!" Chuck announced, sneaking a bit into the crevice to take part of the burden from her, tugging it out so that she could squeeze back in to get the other plank.
But as Sarah finally got back in behind everything, trying not to think about how dead she'd be if there was an earthquake right in that very moment, she found the second plank was wider, and she couldn't jam it through the crevice.
"Shit. Chuck, I can't push this one through."
"Lift it over, then," came Casey's voice.
"It's a little heavier. I can try but…" She got her weight under it a little, which was hard to do in such a tiny space, her knees angled strangely and jammed into other pieces of displays, and she hoisted. With a grunt, she got it up off of the floor of the container, and she did her best to angle it so that she could at least get it jammed diagonally on top of the rest of the containers boxes and display cases and everything else it stored for the business owners.
"You doing okay?" Chuck asked.
"Think the only way I can do this is if I use something back here to climb. Otherwise, I can't slide it all the way through to you guys," she called back.
"Don't do it; not worth it," Chuck said at the same time as Casey grumbling, "Sounds like a plan."
As she snorted at the two very different responses to her potentially putting her body on the line, she heard Chuck snap, "Are you serious? She could get hurt. Who knows if this stuff is stable? What if there's glass in here somewhere?"
"We need that plank and we need it now. Do you wanna heft all this super heavy shit outta the way right now just to get one plank of wood Toys Central needs?"
"Of course I don't wanna do that—"
"Well?'
"—but I'd rather do that than have Sarah get shish-kebabed in there."
Sarah didn't much like that imagery. "Guys?"
"She weighs as much as a feather. She isn't gonna shift anything if she climbs up there. It'll be fine."
"And if her foot slips because something wasn't slid in there sturdily enough or it's slanted on something else and it shifts under her? Shish-kebab Sarah."
"Guys…" she cut in again.
"You're being dramat—"
"What is it, Sarah?" she finally heard Chen the maintenance guy cut in.
Thank you.
She was already looking around for a foothold. "I can do it, but you guys need to try to meet me as much as possible. I can't crawl across this whole mess of stuff while shifting the plank toward you."
"Sarah, you don't have—"
"She said she'll do it. Shut up and help her."
She waited patiently for Chuck to sigh, and then she heard him bite out a, "Fine. I'll get in there. Someone give me a hand."
Using her foothold, she tried to push her weight into it just to make sure it would hold it. It held. So she hoisted herself up, bracing against the large display in front of her with one hand, trying to yank the plank up to balance it on top of said display.
"Here goes nothin'," she muttered, slowly scooting it as far as she could, having to sort of push and pull on it to make sure it stayed propped on top instead of doing a nosedive into another trench in which it would be lost to them forever. Or, at least, for a few hours.
But then she'd pushed it as far as it would go, and there were still at least six or seven feet left to go to the end of the truck container. Not to mention, Chuck had yet to show up at the end of the proverbial tunnel to help her.
"You comin' up here to help?" she asked, her voice strained as she sort of laid herself across the top of the display, not too wisely. But it was the only way she could keep shifting the plank towards its destination.
"I'm right here."
She gasped, not expecting his voice to be almost right beside her. A chill rocketed through her as she looked down. He'd somehow jimmied himself deep into the crevice she'd first traversed.
And now he was nearby, reaching up towards her. "You keep pushing, I'll make sure you don't—"
"If you say shish-kebab again, I'll push this display onto you."
She heard him make a strangled sound. "Okay, this is…a very tight squeeze." She thought she heard him let out a "That's what she said" under his breath and she snorted, deciding to let him have that one.
But then a warm hand was on her waist, nothing but her thin hoodie and her cotton white t-shirt she wore between his fingers and the skin stretched over her hipbone. "I'm just…here if you slip or something…"
She tried to ignore the pressure against her hip, instead carefully squirming her way further onto the barely controlled mess of rented festival easy-ups and wooden displays.
"This is so slow going. At this rate, it'd probably be faster to just…take everything out," she groused, slowly inching it further and further along. It nearly slipped, starting to tilt. "Shit!"
But a strong arm shot in between some wooden beams and caught it. She heard Chuck let out a strained grunt and she caught sight of his face, his teeth grit, face red. "Caught it. Get it getitgetit!"
She scooted further along, snagged it, and with Chuck's help, got it levered back onto the top of everything else. She felt something underneath her shift, just an inch, half an inch even, and she froze with a quiet curse.
"What? You okay?"
"Something moved under me."
"Okay, you need to come down from there now."
"How?" she demanded to know. "I'm basically a plank myself up here. I can't go backwards without definitely knocking something over under me. I can only go forward. And then this actual plank will be stuck up here."
"Come to the side towards me."
"There isn't enough room for me to get down without getting hurt."
"I'll help you down."
"Nope." And she kept pushing, scooting the plank in front of her. But then the movement under her that happened was worse. It swayed, and she was nearly made dizzy. "Oh God. Okay. That's…not good."
"Enough. You're freaking me out."
"You're such a lily, Bartow—"
"Will you get off of his ass for one second, Casey?" she snapped towards the end of the truck where Casey and Chen watched unhelpfully.
She heard him grunt, and then his face appeared at the other end, the light beaming in behind him, making him more of a silhouette than anything. "Well, while you two are doin' that, I'm gonna get some chocolate chip mint ice cream. You won't hafta worry about me bein' on anyone's ass for a little while. How's that?"
"Are you serious?" Chuck drawled. And apparently he was, because she could heard him stomping down the ramp. "Chen? You're still over there to help us get this thing down when we get it to you, right?"
"Ya, boss. I'm still here."
Five minutes of straining passed, Sarah's body aching from being so tense trying not to move too suddenly, even as she used muscles she rarely used, even when she was doing her daily workouts.
Finally, Chen clasped onto the other end of the plank.
"Got it. I'll get the rest," he said.
"Thank God," she panted, but then the swaying got worse underneath her, and she realized the display she had most of her weight laid out on was on some kind of thing with wheels. "Oh my God…o-okay…Chuck?"
"Reach to your right. I got you, just reach towards me."
She was afraid to even move her head for fear this whole thing would come down and she'd be hurt. But she jutted her arm out and she felt his fingers around her wrist. "I think I got it. I think I can go forward." But when she tried to, it didn't work out the way she wanted to. She barely kept from doing a nosedive into the middle of everything else, like she'd been trying to prevent the plank from doing.
Sarah let out a squeak, rolling to the side.
Thankfully, Chuck was serious about being there in case something happened. As her legs swung down into the crevice first, his firm grip was on her thigh, and he reached up with his other hand to gather her down off of the precipice.
She got a little bit jammed on her way down, and she knew she'd have a bruise on her back from that, but the momentary pain from hitting herself faded to the back of her mind as she slid against Chuck's tall, lithe frame. The crevice squeezed their forms tightly together, and she realized after a moment that his hand was still clutching her thigh, his other arm slung around the small of her back.
She held onto his bicep in one hand and embraced him with her other arm around his shoulders.
It was still sort of dark in here, amidst all of the horribly shaped pieces of wood and tent poles and everything else that jutted out of this mess. But she could see his wide eyes, looking up into her equally wide eyes.
"You two okay? I got the piece!" Chen's voice carried through the container.
"Fine," Chuck exclaimed, more of a blurted squeak, actually. "Um, you think you can squeeze to the…um…side? You get outta here first."
She took a slow breath, trying to keep him from feeling how hard it was for her to breathe with them being pressed this close together. "Yeah," she half-whispered.
And they both scooted in opposite directions, their figures becoming significantly less welded together. She took more deep breaths, shutting her eyes as she squeezed through the small space towards freedom.
That was…something. Enough of a something that she felt herself breaking out in a bit of a sweat now, where she hadn't before. She'd just been so focused on not killing herself up there and not losing the piece they needed that she hadn't noticed how much she was sweating. That was all it was.
It had nothing to do with his arms around her, his hand on her thigh, his fingers so long that they nearly encircled her entire leg. His breath mingling with hers, lips so close.
She refused to think about how Casey's snarky quip about the comic book shop owner's wimpy arms was so insanely wrong and she knew that firsthand now.
Finally emerging from the crevice, Sarah blew a bit of hair away from her face and shared a look with Chen. "It got hairy up there for a second."
"I heard. You okay?" he asked in concern.
"Fine. Thanks. Luckily Chuck was there to…break my fall." She turned to see Chuck squeeze out of the space after her.
"I have no idea how I fit in there," he said, looking back at it. "Also really glad my fear of being trapped in small spaces didn't flare up while I was doing that." He shivered dramatically.
She sent him a weak smile.
"I'm gonna load this up and cart it to the Toys Central spot. You two want to start filling the carts in order of the list? I'll deliver them."
"Got it," Chuck said, clapping his hands once and then rubbing them together. Hands that had just touched her in a way she hadn't been touched…for a bit. And now she was very aware of just how long "a bit" was.
Chen moved off and Chuck lowered his voice so only she could hear, mumbling, "And our fearless leader will enjoy his mint chocolate chip ice cream."
Sniffing in amusement, she put a bit of space between her and the comic book shop owner, grabbing the clipboard and eyeing the next store on the list. Before getting back to work, however, she felt it was only polite…
Her voice quiet, she waited for him to meet her gaze and she said, "Um, thanks…for saving me." She swallowed hard. "I appreciated not becoming shish-kebab."
His smile was a bit crooked, his eyes soft. "Oh. You're welcome." He cleared his throat, tugging on the hem of his shirt. "Uh, I would've…saved anyone who came flying down towards me like that." He paused just slightly, and then: "But it seems this shopping center needs your bookstore, this community needs it, and it…needs you. So…I had keep you from becoming Shish-KeBookworm."
Sarah laughed, shaking her head, and she let him gently take the clipboard from her and tap the next store on the list.
He chirped, "Ah, yes. The spy shop is next. Eye Spy Incorporated. Cute how they call themselves Incorporated when they aren't a corporation. It's so spy villain of them."
Snorting, she turned and headed to the right of what they'd just loaded and taken to Toys Central's spot. The display case nearest her was labeled with tape that someone wrote "Eye Spy" on with a Sharpie. "You climb out and I'll pass the pieces they need down to you and you can stick 'em on the cart."
"Why don't I pass the stuff down to you?" he asked, sending her a look, even as he seemed to move to follow her orders.
"Because I said I'm passing the stuff down to you."
"Why are you so stubborn?" he asked.
"Just climb down there and get ready."
She sent him a droll look as she heard him mutter another, "That's what she said", and got to work pulling out the Eye Spy Inc labeled displays.
A/N: She said "oops I fell" ():-)
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-SC
