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: It's so beautiful and rainy here today and I want to just sit and enjoy the rain and read with some sort of hot beverage next to me like Sarah in her little reading nook she created for herself BUT ALAS, we have work to get to, don't we, Sarah? Sigh.
Disclaimer: I don't own Chuck or its characters, and any similarities in this fic to any corporate entities are just coincidence... shh.
He didn't know when he would ever be able to properly breathe again.
More concerning than that? He didn't care.
Especially when he felt the muscles in the small of her back flex under his fingertips, before she rested her chest on top of his, burying her face in the crook of his neck, every bit of her weight pressing him down into the mattress.
Let her crush him; he did not give a fuck.
But then she shifted, her lower half moving away from his, and she made this little mew sound that sent him to the stars, rolling off of him and flopping onto her back to his left.
For the first time in what had to be a long, long time—likely hours at this point—he wasn't touching Sarah Walker, Castle in the Air Bookstore owner, his very own Bookworm. She was lying a good four to five inches away from him, to his left, both of them just staring at the ceiling of her bedroom.
And he missed her. Ridiculously, heinously, he missed her.
Her skin was so smooth.
Like silk laid out over rippled, rope-like muscle.
He could hear her huffing and puffing as much as he was, though, so at least he wasn't alone in just how hard all of this had rocked his lung capacity, his body as a whole. He felt that twitching sensation in his muscles that happened after his workouts with Captain Awesome, only he felt it in places he hadn't even known existed before.
Because he'd used muscled he hadn't used until tonight, he was certain.
She'd insisted she needed everything, all of him, and that was what he gave her. To the best of his ability.
Chuck Bartowski didn't know how to deal with the last few hours, the time he'd spent buried under the covers with Sarah Walker. He wasn't sure what to think, what to say, how to move forward from it. Every part of him, his body, his heart, his head, his whole soul, was drowning in a sort of blissful fog. He felt like he was floating and any moment something might crash through her bedroom window, or one of their phones would ring, and he'd be yanked back down, his feet on solid ground again.
He wanted to touch her again, to make sure this was real.
But he kept his hands to himself. And he kept the thoughts raging through his head to himself, too.
"Holy shit," he heard her whisper. It was more of a breath she let out, and "holy shit" just happened to form on her lips as the air was expelled.
Yeah.
Him, too.
Movies, TV shows, books, whatever else… they always had made sex seem like this magical thing that swept you up and didn't let you go, even when it was over. Transporting at its best. Like you'd been plunged into some alternate world where pleasure you'd never known was possible thrived.
It turned the lives of these characters upside-down.
People did such heinous horrible things over it.
And he'd never understood that. He'd had enough sex in his twenty-six years of life, the nine or so years since he'd experienced it for the first time, the multiple girlfriends he'd had, the partners he'd been with… and he'd never understood the way people snapped over sex. Like, yeah, sure…it was good, but that good? That you'd ruin everything in your life over it? For sex with that one person? Absolutely not.
He thought he got it now.
Not that he was gonna go ruin his life now, but God Almighty, he had never felt anything so mind-blowingly good. He'd had the control in the back room of her store a few weeks ago, and it had been great, but frenzied, hurried, a little clumsy against those shelves. The moment Sarah Walker got control in this bed, she did so much with that control, he thought he was going to go stark raving mad from the pleasure.
This had been so different from anything else, from the time he'd spent with other women. And he thought it was her utter skill—her virtuoso-levels of genius—and he had a sneaking suspicion this was that "fit" Lou was talking about when she broke up with him.
He and Sarah fit together.
She was that person who slid in right up against him. Yes, with all of her different interests, the way she was so different from him in so many ways, how much she kept locked up inside, how clearly she didn't like talking about deep, personal stuff… But she understood in all the most important ways what drove him, and it drove her, too. It seemed to have driven them together.
A collision course.
Something liquid hot was going through his veins. Wasn't that how Lou phrased it? The adrenaline? The buzzing in his chest? Like there was nowhere he'd rather be than right there, with her?
Chuck slowly let his head loll to the side, looking at her profile as she continued to stare up the ceiling, her chest still rising and falling visibly as she attempted to control her breathing. Her eyes were shut, and there was a small smile on her face.
He felt a big smile slowly grow on his own face.
"You looking at me?"
Chuck blinked, his smile dimming a little. "What?"
"Are you looking at me? I can feel it."
And there it was.
The smile came back to his face. She blinked her eyes open and turned to look at him, her own smile widening just slightly. "Mhm," she mumbled, her voice deep and scratchy. "Thought so."
"Only for a few seconds. I promise."
She let out a soft breath, smoothing her hair back from her face. And then she blurted, "D'you want a drink?"
Chuck cleared his throat. "I-I could—Yes. Please."
Sarah nodded, then pushed herself to sit up, staying like that for a moment, her shoulders rising as she took a deep breath, and then she swung her legs out from under the covers and she stood. Chuck diverted his gaze from her naked form up to the ceiling, pursing his lips.
When he saw she had the robe on in his peripheral, he turned to look at her again, watching as she tied the front securely.
"What do you drink?" she asked, and he realized that wasn't something that had ever come up before, in the months that they'd known one another now.
"All of it," he answered. She sent him a look, like he wasn't being helpful with a response like that. "Whatever you're making for yourself."
"Whiskey and ice?"
"Perfect."
With one last nod, she left him alone in her bedroom. Chuck turned onto his stomach, burying his face in the pillow. And with Sarah in the kitchen or wherever it was she kept the whiskey, he knew he was safe letting out a muffled curse into the pillow, followed by a long groan.
He turned his head to press his cheek into the pillow, beaming so hard he wondered if his face might crack in two from it.
}o{
Sarah paused with the drinks in hand, peering into the hallway, at the door at the end of the hallway, halfway ajar. The hall looked especially long tonight, the light from her bedroom cutting a strange, crooked shadow along the wall and wood floors.
Chuck Bartowski was in there.
She had to go in there, too. Eventually. After that.
She'd confirmed by glancing at the kitchen clock while fixing their drinks… They'd spent two and a half hours together, barely stopping just long enough to take a few breaths here and there, between intensely beautiful, mind-blowingly delicious sex. Adrenaline was still spilling through her. And she still had desire and want rushing through her veins, pulsing in her limbs, in her chest. Her teeth were still buzzing somehow.
When had anything ever made her teeth buzz that wasn't the awful experience of going to the dentist for a root canal?
This was a much more pleasant situation.
She scoffed at herself, slowly starting her journey down the long hallway, back to Chuck's side. Pleasant was the biggest understatement of her life.
How did you look someone in the face after doing that with them? After experiencing that with them?
Sarah was completely off-center, rocked back on her heels, trying to make sense of it all. As if someone had picked up the bed with them in it, strapped it to a fire spit, and spun them like mad over the white hot flames.
She knew inherently that it wasn't normal to feel this way. She wasn't in some movie Carina dragged her to see because whatever guy happened to be in her life at any given time refused to see it. This wasn't one of those Hallmark Channel movies her mom liked to watch. Nor was she in the middle of one of the romance novels sitting on her shelves at her store.
This was real life, and insane things were happening to her body. The sex was over, and the sensations were still spilling through her like they were still tangled together in bed.
But there was also the way they made eye contact. What in the hell was that?
It made everything feel…feverish, almost.
It had been fantastic, and who in the hell was she that connecting in such a real, deep, intense way with a man during a roll in the sheets wasn't scaring her shitless?
Sarah quietly bumped the door with her shoulder to ease it open enough that she could walk through, eyeing him as he splayed out on his stomach, hugging the pillow to his face.
The door squeaked and her feet shuffled against the floor, causing him to turn and look at her over his shoulder. He smiled, then quickly crawled up to face her, sitting back against the headboard, the sheet pooled in his lap.
Sarah forced herself not to look at said lap.
"I wasn't sure if you…wanted me to stay here, or-or if I should, um, get some clothes on…" he admitted, ruffling his hair with both hands adorably. It did nice things to his shoulders and chest, she noticed.
The bookstore owner furrowed her brow in confusion. "You have someplace you need to go?" she asked, climbing onto the bed and handing him the drink as she crawled to the headboard and carefully sat next to him, crossing her long legs at her ankles.
He lifted the drink towards her with a "Thank you" and she smiled at him in response. "N-No, I don't. I just didn't know what you…wanted. I mean, I dunno what the drill is."
"The drill?" Boy, he was something else. "Is there a…drill?"
"No." He hissed. "Shit. I just know I've done this before with a girl and she looked at me like I was nuts for not getting out of bed, getting dressed, and leaving, like, immediately."
Sarah raised her eyebrow, sipping her drink, loving how warm it felt going down. She moved the covers and slid her legs under them. It was cold in here now that she wasn't having sex. "What makes you think I would ever do that to you?"
"I didn't think that, I-I just didn't know…"
Putting her hand on his forearm, feeling that incredible spark, that buzz, that continued to assail her whenever they touched, she waited for him to meet her gaze, and she said quietly, steadily, "Please don't go anywhere."
He eased back against her headboard, almost melting into it, a crooked smile slowly growing over his face. "Nah, I'm good here."
She couldn't hold back the soft, breathy giggle.
They sipped their drinks together in the comfortable quiet. And even though it was comfortable, she felt a thread of the unspoken there between them, just a bit of tense air in the room.
She let it sit for a little while.
And then he spoke up first, just as she imagined he would. "The elevator doors opened up and I stood there staring into that empty box wondering if I was maybe the stupidest fucking guy on the planet."
That made her chuckle.
"Like, seriously, what in the hell is wrong with me that I got that far?"
"I feel like you're taking all the blame, but I'm worse, because I let you leave and I was just standing in the middle of my apartment filled with regret. I was gonna keep standing there, too. At least you took action. You came back." He turned to meet her gaze. She decided not to bite her tongue this time. "And I am so glad that you did," she drawled, sipping her drink.
Chuck's face crumbled in awe, and she thought she'd seen peak adorableness, but then he handed her the remainder of his drink with a, "Would you mind holding this for a sec?", before sliding down the headboard as if melting into her bed, letting out a long, happy moan. He even turned into the pillow and squirmed in glee.
Sarah rocked forward with a laugh. She took a deep breath and sank a bit lower against her pillows, propping both glasses on her abdomen.
She turned to peek at him. His face was fully buried in the pillow, his arms hugging it tightly around his head. And he groaned one last time, a long, deep groan. Perfectly relatable.
Sarah smirked a little, loving the way his hair curled up every which way from his head, a testament to how often she'd used those curls as a handhold in the last few hours. "Hey, if you don't take this whiskey back from me, I'm gonna finish it for you," she said quietly.
He turned his head, his cheek smashed against the pillow cutely, and he smiled, which smashed it even more. "After that? You can do whatever the hell you wanna do and I'll just…" He lifted his hand and gave her a salute, "Yes, ma'am, whatever you want, ma'am."
She giggled, shaking her head. Instead of downing his drink, she thrusted the glass towards him. He smiled at her and took it, draining it himself, swallowing it, and reaching over to set it on the nightstand closest to him. And then he plopped face first into the bed again.
Sarah finished her own drink and set it on the nightstand on her side, before she sank further into the sheets and shivered just a little. Maybe skimping on using her heater worked when it was just her, when she was clothed, wearing layers, socks on her feet, thick sweatshirts and robes, drinking hot tea and coffee, wrapped up in a blanket reading in her favorite chair…
But she felt a little embarrassed by how frigid her apartment was now that she had a guest. He'd think she was a cheapskate or something. And he didn't have anything on his body but a satin sheet and a coverlet that wasn't thick enough for LA's winter.
And, not to put too fine a point on it, but again, she was naked under the thin robe.
Now that they weren't in the thick of turning one another's worlds upside-down, lying much more still than they'd been before, she could feel the cold.
And he probably could, too. He was such an LA boy. The amount of times he'd shivered and said something about how cold it was through his gritted teeth since she met him…
Sarah sat up, holding the sheets to her chest for modesty even with the robe, tucking her hair behind her ear and clearing her throat. "Sorry it's so cold in here."
"Oh. Is-is it cold? I didn't…notice…"
She smirked at him, sending him a flat look. And then she ran her eyes down his arms covered in goosebumps. He was all tense, like he was resisting the urge to shiver. "Mhm. Is that why your goosebumps have goosebumps?"
Chuck snorted. "Okay, maybe it's a little…chilly in here."
"I'll go turn my heater up."
"Is it not working, or…?"
"That in your bag of tech know-how?" she asked, raising her eyebrow.
"No. I mean, I've never tried, but maybe I could figure it out. I'm pretty good with these." He turned onto his back and held up his hands, wiggling his fingers.
Oh, she knew he was. Firsthand. No pun intended.
But she had a stupid shyness that wouldn't leave her alone right at that moment and she wasn't confident enough to flirt with him and say it out loud.
"It's not broken, I just don't…use it often. Um…"
"It is super expensive," he filled in, folding his arms under his head and looking up at her so nonchalantly. "I don't blame you. Utilities aren't a friggin' joke over here."
She sent him a dubious look. "Mm. But aren't you, like, extremely rich? You could put your heat on full blast for the entire winter, even when you aren't home, and it wouldn't make a dent in your fortune." She realized belatedly how blunt that was, wondering if her filter wasn't working as well after all of the intense sensations and physical exertion or…something. "Sorry," she rushed out, furrowing her brow and shaking her head. She reached over to press her hand into his chest, the covers keeping her fingers from feeling his warm skin. "That wasn't supposed to sound all…judgy. I didn't mean it like that."
"I'm not offended. What you said was completely accurate."
"Accurate or not, I hope you don't think I—" She paused, shaking her head. What was she even doing here? She didn't know. "Life throws curveballs at everyone, whether they have a lot of money or not."
She knew life hadn't been kind to him. Sure, being handed a fortune in your uncle's will was cool, but she was positive Chuck would've rather had his uncle alive and with them. And his parents… That loss probably still gave him and Ellie so much pain and uncertainty. To not have that closure, either… She ached for him.
Chuck pushed himself to sit up next to her. "Yeah. I know. Whatever you…think I'm thinking that you're thinking? I-I'm not thinking that." He frowned. "Jesus Christ, I just said so much nothing. What was that?"
Giggling, she hugged herself, adjusting the robe and sheets to better cover her, pushing deeper into the pillows behind her to try to glean more warmth from them. "I know what you were saying, don't worry."
A tentative silence settled over them then, and Sarah felt tense. It felt like something needed to be said.
That Friday night in her bookstore, before the festival, hadn't been a one-time explosion of two-way crush coming to a head. It hadn't been a couple of minutes of bold passion fulfilled. And it definitely hadn't gotten it out of their system.
All of those things had flashed through her mind in the time since that night. All of them were wrong, though.
She wanted Chuck Bartowski. She wanted him in her bed, absolutely. But she wanted him in her life.
Being around him made everything inside of her calm, but then he made it rage, as well. She came alive with him. Life felt full and bright and beautiful. She'd felt a real and deep joy inside of her since she became friends with him.
Granted, she wasn't foolish enough to think her joy was just about Chuck. The bookstore was finally starting to pick up a bit more. There were some slow days, yes, but in general, a lot more people were coming in. She had more busy days than slow days. She would have to do the math to figure out when she would have enough of a profit to hire at least one other person, but she didn't think that time was further off than maybe a year?
She wasn't great at math. She'd have to get someone who was good at math to help her.
An accountant maybe? She inwardly snorted at herself. That'd be a good first step.
"What now?"
She flinched. She couldn't help it. She hadn't been prepared for his voice to cut into her thoughts and more than that, she hadn't been prepared for him to ask that. Even though she was thinking along the same lines.
She was happier. The bookstore was making her happy, as much as she stressed over it. And Chuck was making her happy, as much as she stressed over him, the question marks that hovered over his curly-haired head.
But what now?
If Chuck saw her flinch, nothing in his face indicated that when she turned to peek up at him. "I suppose I didn't have any thoughts about 'what now' when I dragged you to bed," she said quietly, wincing.
"I wasn't thinking about it, either. I just—I've wanted this since that night in your, um, your bookstore. That's the truth."
She let her head fall back to thump against her wooden headboard. "Me, too," she admitted in a strained voice.
Chuck turned wide eyes on her. "Yeah?" She nodded. A slow, meltingly adorable smile tugged at one side of his mouth. "Oh. Then I'm not…alone in wanting this…more?" He shook himself, his brow furrowed. "Shit, my mouth is broken. I mean that…I want more. Of-of this, yeah, I mean, duh." He pointed at the bed they were both lounging in and she felt herself blushing. She'd be a shameless liar if she didn't agree with that sentiment. Hard. "But I mean more with you. With you with you."
He looked pained. As if he couldn't find the right words to express himself and it was all going wrong.
But it wasn't all going wrong. She knew exactly what he meant, what he was trying to say. And she couldn't figure out what words to use, either. She'd never been good with words unless she was writing said words down, or reading someone else's words.
"Chuck…?"
"Hm?" He sounded pained now.
"Is what's next maybe…a date?" She raised both eyebrows in question, trying to fight off the nerves. The stupid shyness.
"I think usually the, uh, proper order is the date before we get to this point…" he said, the slight smile on his face having a hint of mischief in it. She loved it.
"Fuck order."
His golden brown eyes sparkled. "Fuck proper."
She grinned at him, feeling like the entire production of Fiddler on the Roof Carina had dragged her to during their San Francisco girls' trip a few years ago were dancing on her heart. "I did say I owe you dinner for bringing me those signs."
There was surprise in his face then as he shifted to face her a little better. "Oh. Then that was a date. I wondered." He winced. "And by wondered, I mean, I was obsessing over what you meant by it during the entire drive here. Like a friggin' basket case."
Sarah let out a melodic chuckle. She did want him. So badly. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean for that to set you off when I said it. You did me such a huge favor bringing me those signs and I wanted to pay you back."
"So it…wasn't meant as a date then…" he surmised, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully.
"I guess not at the time." He nodded quickly, and she wasn't sure if he was disappointed or not. So she added, "But I'm allowed to change my mind, aren't I?"
Oh, the way he beamed at her when what she said settled in his brain. It took him a few seconds. She didn't judge him for it. The last few hours of this intense, passionate meeting of body and mind and heart had sort of knocked her own brain off-kilter, too.
She was suddenly breathless again.
"Yeah, you're always allowed to change your mind. That's totally allowed. When?" he rushed out, catching her off guard, scooting closer to her. "When can we do this dinner date thing? Can it be tomorrow? Or if you're too busy tomorrow, maybe Monday night? I'll take Tuesday or Wednesday. The soonest possible night you're free, even if that ends up being a year from now, I don't ca—"
Sarah didn't resist the mounting need in her, the way his wild-eyed breathlessness was making things churn inside of her in the best way, the excitement, the way her blood was rushing through her veins, white hot flames licking at her limbs.
She cut him off by grabbing his face, planting a searing kiss on his mouth. He accepted her readily as she climbed into his lap, and when his hands landed on her body, the sheets falling away from them, the robe drifting off of her form, the cold wasn't a problem anymore.
There weren't any problems at all, in fact.
There was nothing.
Save for the sensation of having him under her, his arms around her, his hands tender and warm against her skin.
}o{
Chuck watched her come back from the bathroom off of the side of her bedroom, flicking the switch to turn off the light as she swept across the threshold, fixing the tie of her robe to make it more secure around her lithe form.
She sent him a shy smile, pausing for a moment, before making her way around the room, picking up their clothes that they'd thrown down on their way to the bed hours earlier.
He snickered when she couldn't find one of his socks, only to have to poke around under the bed for it. And he melted when she sweetly folded his stuff and set it neatly on her desk next to a pretty rose-gold laptop he hadn't noticed before.
"You don't have to pick up my stuff. I-I can…" But when he shifted to get out of the bed, he realized he was completely naked and he cleared his throat. "Oh. Where are, um, my…boxers."
"I thought I tossed them somewhere, but you might've kicked 'em down to the end of the bed after I tossed 'em. Under the covers. I don't remember seeing them fly across the room the way the rest of your stuff did." It was insanely cute, the way she made a little whistle sound and arced her pointer finger through the air.
Chuck blushed. "Oh." And he felt around at the end of the bed under the covers with both of his feet. Lo and behold. "Ah…" He hooked them with his toe and pulled them up, snagging them with his fingers and yanking them out, holding them up in triumph. "You're brilliant. Well done."
"Thank you," she giggled.
And then he realized belatedly that she had just put his clothes on the desk near the door. Was that a hint? Did she want him to put his clothes on and get out of her hair?
He stared at the pile of clothes, then looked down at the boxers in his hand. "Oh. I-I should probably…" He cleared his throat, feeling a sense of deep, deep reluctance. He was aching to stay. He wanted to stay here, in this moment, in this apartment, so badly.
"…Go?" she filled in. She stopped and turned to face him, crossing her arms at her chest, almost hugging herself. She was frowning. And as if realizing she was frowning, she fixed it into a small, closed-mouth smile, shrugging her shoulders. "You have to?"
"N-No, I don't…have to. I just thought, you know, if you wanted your…space back. Um…" He pointed towards his clothes neatly folded on her desk.
She followed where he pointed with her blue eyes, and it must've clicked, because she spun back to him. "Wait, no. I didn't put those there to—I'm not trying to kick you out, Chuck."
"Oh." Oh thank God.
She winced. "I probably could've put your clothes someplace less…right next to the door. Jesus, Sarah," she breathed, "you idiot…"
"Hey, no. Wait. You picked 'em up and folded them all nice. I appreciate that a lot. It's, um…pretty cute actually."
She blushed, tucking her hair behind her ear and snorting. "So you're not…leaving. Right?" The way she peeked up at him through her eyelashes, her chin tilted down.
"Right." Sarah smiled at him, and he smiled right back at her.
Something she'd said earlier came to him then and he dropped his gaze to his lap.
Life threw curveballs. His own life had a curveball, a pretty gnarly one—two in fact, though they always felt like they'd come in a packaged deal in a lot of ways.
Chuck had told Sarah about Alexei Volkoff's death, how he dropped his multi-billion dollar company and an unfathomably large fortune into his unofficial nephew's lap.
But she didn't know how Volkoff had come into his and Ellie's lives, or why.
His parents.
Everything that assailed the Bartowski siblings when Stephen and Mary Bartowski disappeared into thin air.
This had been an insanely incredible night—the best night of his life, he was sure. Though he wasn't confident enough to tell Sarah that. That was maybe too intense.
"Chuck…?"
He lifted his head and watched as Sarah moved to the end of the bed, crawling onto it and coming closer, folding her knees under her body and resting her hands on her thighs.
"What?" she asked quietly. "What is it?"
Chuck sighed, and then he shook his head. He didn't want to drop poison into this delicious glass of perfectly distilled and aged whiskey. And he didn't know why his metaphors sucked so badly even in his own brain.
He pushed his fingers through his hair, puffing his cheeks, looking away from her. He'd feel guilt, deep gut-wrenching guilt, if this fantastic, wonderful woman agreed to go on dates, explore this amazing magnetism between them, continue to dive into bed with him…without her knowing what she was getting into. Who he was. What had happened. How haunted he still was even if he pretended he wasn't haunted.
"Hey… Did I…do something?"
"No," he said immediately, reaching out to grab one of her hands, holding it gently, squeezing reassuringly. "There's something I need you to know…about me…before this goes any further." He let out a frustrated grumble, rustling his curls with his free hand. "I should've told you before I jumped into bed with you tonight."
Sarah froze, her eyes widening. "…Okay? Are you…gonna tell me now?"
So he supposed here went the poison. Damn it.
It just felt like the right thing to do.
"Yeah." He cleared his throat again, adjusting the way he was splayed out in her bed so that he could push himself to sit up straighter, fixing a pillow behind his back. "I-I just feel totally…ridiculous doing this while totally naked. D'you mind if I just…" He lifted his boxers again. Sarah gave him a flat look, but she looked partially amused, too. Then she gave him the go ahead with a silent hand gesture, her palm up. "Erm, thanks."
Chuck somehow felt even more ridiculous shoving the boxers back under the covers and awkwardly bouncing and yanking at them to get them up his legs. He carefully pulled them the rest of the way, avoiding any mishaps besides probably looking like a cartoon character, and then he let the waistband snap against his hips, clearing his throat one last time, blushing, and scratching behind his ear.
"Better?" she asked, smirking with her eyebrows raised.
"Yep."
And she waited expectantly, her hands back on her thighs, palms down.
Taking a deep breath, he dove in.
"Well, you've probably noticed that Ellie and I…erm, neither of us really mention our parents. Ever." He stared at his own lap, not able to see her reaction, and he continued before she could either confirm or deny. "It isn't that it's by design or anything. We don't purposely do it, it's just…" Something occurred to him then, and he looked up at her with wide eyes. "Wait, has Ellie told you about it?"
"She did fill me in on your love of old kung fu movies."
He hissed in wince. "And you aren't kicking me out of your apartment?"
"Here's the kicker. She told me before that night when we had sex in the back room of my store."
The way she just said it. He had to take a slow breath. And he needed to be a grown-up, too. They did have sex, that was what happened, and it shouldn't make him blush and lose his breath to hear her say it so bluntly. Especially after having sex again for the last few hours.
"You must like me."
"Yeah," she breathed, a small smile on her face, her eyes serious even as they glimmered. "I guess I must." They met one another's gazes for a long moment, and then she pressed her lips in a thin line and sighed. "Your parents haven't come up whenever I've hung out with Ellie."
"Oh. Okay." So it fell to him. He couldn't help feeling better about the fact that this would come from him. He didn't harbor as much rage about the whole thing as his sister did, he knew. But only because she'd gotten the brunt of it, and she'd done more than he'd ever understand to shield him from the worst.
Sarah merely watched him, her bottom lip clamped between her teeth. He wasn't sure why he saw a glint of guilt in her face.
"They aren't…around." Sarah frowned deeply at that. "Not that they're gone gone. Well, they are…? But I don't know that they're, like, dead or whatever." He looked away, nervously running his hands up and down his legs. "They disappeared when I was a kid. Technically, Ellie was a kid, too. Well, pre-teen." He snapped his fingers. "Poof. Just like that."
He watched then as Sarah hunched forward, hanging her head, her brow furrowed, that guilt somehow more pronounced. "I know."
Chuck was very confused. "You…know? About my parents?" And then it all clicked and he felt so God damn stupid. "Oh. Shit, you watched it, didn't you? And you've known who I am—was—this whole time?" The embarrassment was kind of overwhelming as he dropped his face in his hands with a groan. "Celebrity because my parents ran off and true crime podcasters fetishized my abandonment."
He had this unfair vision of Sarah finding out he was the Chuck Bartowski, angling to get close to the once (and maybe always) celebrity who, along with his sister, became a viral sensation especially amongst the the true crime crowd.
Sarah scooted in even closer to him, her knees pressed into the side of his leg. "Not the whole time, no. There was no way I recognized you or Ellie from the…don't be offended but…super trashy true crime show that was about you two, and your parents. I don't remember any of the details, only that it was you and Ellie, and my mom was obsessed, not me. Even as a kid, I thought it was mean, putting kids through that shit, and after what you two had already gone through."
"Oh. S-So how'd you find out who I am? I mean that I'm the Charles Bartowski from…that?" He gave her a truly pained look. This was humiliating, to say the least.
She pursed her lips, sliding her hand onto his forearm and squeezing, an attempt at comforting him, he knew. "It wasn't me. I mean, I didn't figure it out. Carina did."
"Ooohhh come onnnnn," he groaned, tipping to the side and pressing his face into the mattress. How was that somehow so much worse?
He felt Sarah's hand on his bare back, rubbing slowly.
"She wanted to know more about you, but instead of finding the stuff I already knew about—the fortune you inherited from your uncle—she found all this stuff about Charles Bartowski the kid from the docuseries about the husband and wife who disappeared and left their kids alone. That's how I found out. It…wasn't that long ago. A few weeks at the most," she said mutely. She sounded sheepish. "I'm sorry. I should've said something maybe… It just didn't feel like it was my business and I-I didn't want you to think I was some true crime freak trying to get more inside info on your…trauma." She rubbed her hand to his shoulder and squeezed.
Chuck shifted more onto his side and looked up into her face. "I'm not upset with ya," he quietly mumbled. "I get not bringing it up. If I were in your shoes, I wouldn't have either. It's all just very…humiliating. Not-Not that you found out because your best friend Googled my name. Just all of it in general." He pushed himself to lean on his elbow and her hand shifted to his bicep, her touch making all of this feel not quite so bad, strangely enough.
"Chuck, I'm sorry. Like I said, I don't know the details. I didn't watch when my mom had it on because I hated the whole thing. But I'm so sorry anyway. I can't even…imagine." She bit her lip, her eyebrows turned up in the middle.
"It's…okay."
"No. It isn't. You don't have to say it is when it isn't. Not to me."
He just looked at her for a long moment, and then he climbed up to sit in front of her, leaning in closer because it felt better to be closer to her rather than further from her.
"You want to know the details though, don't you?" he asked. He didn't want it to sound accusatory, like he was bitter. He just figured she did. Because who wouldn't?
"Chuck, you don't owe me details about any of that. I appreciate you wanted me to know about all of that awful shit from when you were a kid, the way you were pursued by so many dehumanizing bullshit podcast hosts, adults who should've been better. It means a lot you trust me with it. But what'd you think I'd do, kick you to the curb over that?" she asked, her warm hand settling on the back of his neck, her fingers massaging the base where his hair started.
He grumbled softly, letting her see how much he was enjoying that particular touch. She leaned into her ministrations when he did, and the grumble became a groan.
"No. I-I don't know what I thought. It just felt important that you knew before you…commit yourself to anything where I'm concerned." He decided to just lay it all on the line. "I'm pretty sure I have, erm, hang-ups over it still. To put it nicely. When your parents just…are gone, like that, and you-you don't know how or why, and there's no…fucking closure…it's gonna leave some scars. Or more like open wounds. They'll be open 'til I find out what happened to them, Sarah."
She frowned thoughtfully. "That's quite the burden, Chuck."
"Mm." He nodded. "I was too young to really understand the full impact of it when it happened. Ellie had it way worse. She's the oldest and had to take up a shit ton of responsibilities, raising a kid when she was a kid herself practically. But she protected me from most of the really bad stuff. I know she did even though I didn't see how or when, I just know she did."
He'd have guilt over that for the rest of his life, he knew. Even though Ellie dragged him through the coals for it; she hated when he expressed guilt over what she had to do for him.
"What happened?" Sarah asked finally, her voice like a warm blanket in the tense silence.
"I was nine, Ellie was thirteen. They left for some sort of luncheon on a Sunday, up near Pacific Palisades. A friend of theirs had a house overlooking the ocean and it was some…I don't know, anniversary thing. They were nervous about leaving us alone. I don't know. I remember them being antsy about something, one of my mom's patients maybe. She was a psychiatrist and some of her patients that she worked with had serious mental conditions. She was a pro so I never got to hear any of the grisly details but Ellie told me once that she was a psychiatrist for murderers and other criminals who had…brain damage and stuff." He tapped his temple. "She never brought that work home. But I don't know. She and my dad would always talk in my dad's office and us kids weren't allowed in. He had all his tech in there."
"They were antsy? Maybe it was about one of her patients, do you think?" He gave her a sort of sideways look and she blanched, wincing. "Sorry." She squeezed his arm. "I'm not being a true crime podcaster, I swear. I'm not probing you for info because of the docuseries."
"No, no. I know." And he did know. It was hard for people to hear about it and not want to know more about what had happened. Which was how the docuseries found them, how the podcasters found them. Their "fans"… ugh.
He took a deep breath and continued. "I don't know what it was. Neither does Ellie. Neither do investigators. Nobody knows. They just…didn't come back. For hours. And then the sun went down, Ellie made sure I got to bed in spite of us both being worried. And we woke up the next morning to find they still hadn't gotten home. They didn't answer any texts or phone calls. So Ellie called the police. Nobody could find their car, nobody could find them. They never got to that party. Emails, texts, letters, some of it indicated they could have been planning something. To leave. But it was never anything definitive."
"Planning to leave?" Sarah asked, frowning. "Like…abandon you guys?"
"Yeah. Never amounted to anything. Like I said, they never found their car."
Sarah was quiet, her shoulders hunched forward, her hand still squeezing his forearm, an attempt at comfort he knew, even as all of this information raged in her brain.
"Don't even try to figure it out," Chuck said softly. "There's no figuring it out. It happened almost twenty years ago now. Ellie and I eventually got to a point where digging, searching, trying to find any information about it, even with Alexei Volkoff using his resources to help us, it all just led to nothing. Nowhere. And we were killing ourselves over it. Unable to move on. So instead of trying to solve the mystery, we set ourselves instead to the task of…coming to terms with not knowing."
She nodded slowly, and then she crawled down to sit beside him, her hip and thigh pressed to his. She moved her hand to his bicep and rubbed around to his upper back. "How are you doing with that?"
"Not great," he admitted with a bitter scoff. "Not great at all. And I think Ellie hasn't fared much better. But we have moved forward, we've…built lives for ourselves. We had our uncle. Not our real uncle, which I'm sure you know… Carina Googling me and all."
He found he wasn't all that upset that Carina had felt Googling him was necessary. It meant she saw something in Sarah where he was concerned, something that meant her best friend was interested in a guy and she needed to make sure he wasn't a bad bet. That actually felt kind of amazing.
Sarah winced. "Sorry about that."
"I'm not. Please don't feel bad about that. I'm glad Carina cares about you enough to research the guy you're…um…"
"Clearly crushed on?" she filled in when he didn't know how to finish that. "Yeah," she confirmed when he sent her a wide-eyed look. "Very clearly. As much as I tried to deny it and hide it."
Light felt like it was exploding out of him from everywhere.
"Oh, Sarah," he breathed. "You hafta know how crazy I am about you. I've been. It took almost no time whatsoever for me to get over my immature bitterness over not expanding my shop; all I really had to do was talk to you once."
"Maybe someday Casey will let you expand in the other direction."
Chuck barked out a laugh, rocking forward. She had an immensely pleased look on her face, like she felt pretty good about herself for making him laugh.
They both sobered pretty significantly then, their eyes meeting.
"Chuck, I'm so sorry about your mom and dad. I can't even imagine how…" She swallowed thickly. "How you and Ellie got through that. I mean the TV stuff, too. Such a horrible thing to put kids through."
"Yeah. Alexei became our foster parent…guardian…whatever. He stepped in, made sure we had everything we needed. He filled in when we needed a guardian for something. He did a lot more than we ever expected out of him, our Uncle Alexei. That included protecting us when two months into my parents' disappearance, people started knocking on the house's front door. TV crews, producers trying to call us, writers. They got our landline number. Alexei had it disconnected. And he moved us someplace else, an apartment. He had a third party take care of the house for us, but…" He cleared his throat, feeling his voice give out. "We couldn't really leave the place. It had our parents in it still. We'd sneak back sometimes when the coast was clear. Take the bus over, watch some TV, sleep in our old beds."
He and Ellie even unlocked the door to their dad's office and marveled over his little inventions, scanners and technology, computers with huge screens, circuit boards. It was a wonderland for Chuck especially.
"You guys were really alone. Just kids, by yourselves, fending for yourselves."
"Sometimes. But not really alone. We had each other." He shrugged. "The docuseries crap was a lot though. We had… fan pages built for us which was super creepy. We were pariahs in school. That sucked. Thank God for Morgan and his mom Bolonia, too. When Alexei couldn't step in, she did. I love that woman. Superhero single mom." He chuckled. "She took the three of us to a theme park once, on the pier. We got recognized by fans and they tried to get pictures. H'oooo boy, she cursed those people out in Spanish, sent them packing. Ha!"
Sarah giggled. "Good for her."
Her hand moved up to the back of his neck and she rubbed gently.
"It eventually ended," he mumbled, leaning into her, reveling in how good her touch felt, her fingers combing through the hair at the nape of his neck. "The series. The fervor slowed after a few years. By the time I was graduating from high school, it was pretty tame, basically done."
"But people like Carina still spot you I guess, huh?"
"Mhmm. And every time I make a new friend or date someone new, it eventually has to come up."
"And you have to relive it all over again. Losing your parents." She huffed and rolled her eyes at herself. "Like, for instance, me making you relive it right now."
He shook his head at her. "You're different."
"I am?"
Chuck gathered his thoughts, and then he laid his hand on hers, threading their fingers. Because he felt like he wanted it, but also because he needed it. That coupled with her hand on the back of his neck, made him feel the impact of talking about his parents a lot less painful.
"You found out about me being the subject of that docuseries and you didn't immediately approach me about it. Get in my face. Ask a million questions. Drop me right back into the…mess of shit headfirst. You gave me space and you let me get to a point where I felt comfortable talking about it with you. I can't say the same for everyone I've had come in and out of my life over the years." He snorted. "In fact, you're the first."
She gave him a disbelieving look. "What? Seriously?"
"My first serious girlfriend in college… I don't usually like to say her name out loud; it's kind of like a Bloody Mary situation. If I say her name too many times in a row, Ellie will kick in the door with a machete, ready to commit murder."
Sarah cracked up and it sent the best feeling rocketing through his whole body. "That's a great image, but I guess I don't like the idea of her kicking the door in at this particular moment." She wrinkled her nose cutely.
"Nope!" he said vehemently, eyes wide. "But, uh…the girl I was serious with in college…" He cleared his throat. "She knew my parents were gone, that it was just me an' Ellie, but she didn't know that there was a whole docuseries about the mystery of their disappearance. I guess she kind of stumbled across it accidentally, found out it was me, and lost her shit. She broke up with me, said I was untrustworthy because I didn't trust her."
She leaned in closer to him with a scoff. "I get Ellie with the machete. That's such utter bullshit. Untrustworthy?! That's your story to tell. It's your trauma; you are the only one who gets to decide when to relive it, if ever."
Chuck looked at her for a long moment, and maybe it went on for too long, because her cheeks went pink and she shyly pulled her hand away to reach up and tuck her hair behind her ear, glancing away. "I like you so much," he couldn't help gushing.
Sarah pressed her lips together, blushing harder. "Don't get too excited, curls. I'd be a massive hypocrite if I wasn't understanding about this, considering the way I protect my cards at clinical levels at this point."
He chuckled. "Weird. In spite of what you just said, I still like you so much."
Snorting, she bumped his shoulder with hers, sending him an amused little glare.
But Chuck was assailed by the things he'd gotten pretty good at pushing deep down inside over the years, distracting himself with trying to keep his life on the right track, do the right thing, be what the people in his life needed—the people who were still here. And he had to look down at his lap quickly, his chin pressed to his chest, his eyes shutting tight.
There didn't seem to be even a moment of hesitation. Her arms wrapped around him in a tight hug, pulling him close against her and clinging.
Chuck didn't hesitate either.
He melted into her embrace, turning to press his face into her neck.
He let her hold him, and after a few long moments, he finally unfurled his arms from where they were tucked in his lap, wrapping them around the small of her back, and cuddling in tight against her.
The only way they could get any closer would be if she climbed into his lap, and he wasn't at all opposed to that. Not in the slightest.
But instead, he let himself be cradled…comforted.
The quiet allowed for him to reflect on this moment, with this person. Because for the first time in a very, very long time, he felt safe. Specifically, he felt safe in someone's arms.
And for the first time ever, he felt like he had someone besides Ellie that he could really talk to about his parents' disappearance, the burst of awful feelings that crashed through him when he thought about them, the horror of not knowing that haunted him like the most terrifying ghost you could think of.
Her hand slid up his back, her fingers stroking up his neck, and then she was cupping his face, her thumb so tender as it swiped along his cheekbone.
He was safe here, with Sarah. And it felt freaking great. Better than anything he'd felt in a long, long time.
A/N: Thanks for reading. Review if you can, please.
-SC