15 step, 7/? (chuck, chuck/sarah, r)
May. 23rd, 2009 08:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ndnickersonTitle: 15 Step
Part: 7. nice dream
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ndnickerson
Pairing/Characters: Chuck/Sarah
Series: Chuck
Word Count: 2260
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Just when Chuck's starting to get a handle on things, he and Sarah have to pose as a married couple.
Spoilers: Set around and during 2x13, Chuck vs the Suburbs.
Warnings: Language and mildly adult situations.
He still forgets, sometimes, just because it makes this little frisson of pleasure slide down her spine, makes her shake herself just a little, makes her smile. And he loves making her smile because he counted the hours between them, knowing as each one passed that it might be sealing off another of their exits, breaking another one of her excuses, bringing her that much closer to leaving him. The day he can't coax a smile from her anymore is the day their end has come, and he is bitterly aware of it.
It's taken a while but he's realized that all of what draws her to him is how he is so unlike the rest of her life, but her work has made it so they can connect on no other level. She wants someone whose motives she doesn't have to analyze; she wants someone simple, normal, uncomplicated. Before Bryce's email, he would have been ashamed, even embarrassed to identify himself that way.
Oh God, if he'd known.
He forgets himself because in those moments he's still Chuck, and she hasn't stayed for the thrill of protecting and guarding the Intersect or for the newfound charms of her cover boyfriend, she's stayed for him. And then her mouth touches his and her fingers twist in his hair and it's all acting, all of it, because the moment he lets himself believe it, he can hear that bruised, gasping voice from the other side of his bed. If he fucks up again he'll lose her.
"You want to come over tonight?" She keeps her voice low, so the words aren't for Morgan and Lester's benefit, but the expression on her face definitely is, and the answering grin on his. During the past week, for benefit of this cover, he's mentally detailed a sexual history they'll never have, the circumstances of their first night together and the little noises she makes.
And then he looks at her and that all melts away for a second, and she's just Sarah, and this is probably for a mission.
For Chuck, anyway. Carmichael would already be planning what wine to pick up on the way over.
He's just beginning to convince himself it's going to work when they're ordered to go undercover.
In the suburbs.
As husband and wife.
--
Casey hands him a plain gold band in his size, of course, and then gets the slightly exasperated look on his face, because he's already planning for an argument.
"If this were up to me, Sarah and I would be the ones undercover. You aren't up to this. You've never been in this deep."
"All we're doing is figuring out what salamander means. We play house, I flash and tell Sarah, bam, back at the Buy More watching Jeff and Lester play hand-truck pinball." Chuck idly tries the ring on again, but slides it off just as quickly. He can already tell this will be hard, and not for whatever reason Casey's about to say, not from his utter inexperience with light weaponry and his propensity to trip over unguarded ottomans.
"From the second," Casey begins, and snaps his fingers, drawing Chuck's attention and making his voice even harsher. "From the second you drive into that subdivision, you have to assume they can hear everything you're saying. Probably see it, too."
"But you guys sweep for bugs all the time—"
"For what we know about. So Chuck, if you want to keep on the outside, if you don't want to be dissected like a lab rat or put in a bunker, you need to remember that every single moment they're watching you, and you have got to be Carmichael. That's it."
Chuck nods. "Okay, okay. Geez. It'll be fine."
"That's been working so far." Chuck shoots him a glance, but Casey's already brushing it off. "At least now you two don't startle like five-year-olds when you get close."
"Hey, as long as it's cover, right?"
Casey nods through the sarcasm. "Exactly right. Keep your head straight and maybe you won't get shot in too many nonessential limbs before it's all over with."
"You really know how to put a guy at ease," Chuck returns, heading back to his place.
He opens the door and in an instant Ellie's gaze has gone from the dish she's drying, to his face, to the gold band still on his finger. Cautious excitement dawns on her face just as panic surges through him.
"Chuck—"
"It was—" He gropes for a second. Ellie is already way too hung up on the idea of Sarah catching her bouquet, moving Chuck in with her, and rearranging his entire life. "Morgan's idea. That we wear friendship rings." He isn't exactly lying. It was just over the course of a very awkward lunch during the winter he was in eighth grade.
"Um... you know you can tell him 'no' occasionally, right?" Ellie, the damp cloth still in her hand, picks up his own and peers at the ring. "Chuck, that looks..." she furrows her brow a little, "way too much like a wedding ring."
"Oh. Oh! No," he says quickly, pulling his hand back as gently as possible. "We didn't go to the courthouse and... no. Not like that. It's okay, Ellie. I'll tell him we need something just a little less conspicuous. Like matching bracelets. Or Hawaiian shirts."
"Like Morgan needs any more excuse to dress like a dork," Ellie sighs, heading back to the sink.
Chuck sighs, heading for his room and imagining Casey, sitting in his apartment with his headphones on, laughing his ass off.
--
Casey finds the bug quickly, allowing them just the faintest glimpse of it before placing it again. They're supposed to be naive newlyweds, not cool efficient spies, so the brownies will stay miked. By Fulcrum. Of course it would be Fulcrum.
Three cameras upstairs, Casey mouthes to the both of them. The quirk of his eyebrow confirms the placement.
So, evil and pervs, Chuck mouthes back, and gets an eyeroll for his trouble and the faintest chuckle from Sarah. She looks at home in the sundress, bent over the kitchen counter, her hair shot gold by the sunlight. She looks at home because this is another few degrees removed from their all too complicated relationship; this is an easy role to play. In and out in a week. And cameras upstairs that they can use to excuse actually acting like a couple, even in private. There will be no privacy.
Newlyweds.
He didn't pack nearly enough condoms.
--
He walks in with their borrowed golden retriever straining on the leash and she's nowhere to be found, until he follows the muted rattle of a hair dryer to the master bath. She's in her underwear, bent over the sink, drying her hair, and his reaction to the sight would be utterly humiliating, if not for the grim hilarity of it. He'd never be here, seeing her like this, unless they were playing at being married, and playing at being married means he has every right to get hard, seeing her this way.
And the memory of her, lying on her side with her back to him, legs tucked up, too quiet in the dark, means he has no right at all to act on it.
The second she catches his gaze, their eyes meeting through the mirror, she stifles a yawn under her palm. "Such a big day," she says brightly, switching off the dryer. "I'm beat. So how was the neighborhood?"
Any flashes is what she means, and despite himself he walks over to the sink, unnecessarily washing his hands, just so he can have an excuse to keep his gaze on her. God, how can a woman in trimmed red lace say she's tired. And red again, red, tight, her lower lip shaking just a little.
He'll buy her gardenias tomorrow just to apologize for what she can no doubt see in his face right now.
"The neighborhood is really nice," he tosses over his shoulder with a smile, taking too long to dry his hands, and when he turns back again she's slipping into a robe, not the sheer kind. Just enough for the cameras, he guesses, not bothering to hide his disappointment, because Carmichael wouldn't. "Are you sure you're tired, hon?" He raises his eyebrows, wiggles them just a little, and in that second he's not Carmichael anymore and his heart is free-falling. Chuck is the one who's going to climb into that bed with Sarah, Chuck is the one who's going to have to keep his distance without benefit of so much as a sheet between them.
And then she puts her palm on his cheek and kisses him gently, close-mouthed, her smile perfectly guileless. "Yes," she apologizes, and he can almost believe she means it. "We have a lot going on tomorrow."
She flips off the light, ending all argument, sliding into some filmy pink negligee, the sheets stiff as she slides between them.
He wakes alone in bed, the scent of her hair still lingering, grateful only invisible Fulcrum cameras bear witness to his frustration.
--
He always wants to ask exactly how they're so sure he won't be trailed to the Buy More, back to his real life, if Fulcrum is so terrifying, if he's so important. It never comes up, though. They have so little regard for his job that any circumstance is enough to send him out on a fake 'install,' put into mortal peril, and force him back in just in time for Emmett's newest indignity.
And then Casey and Sarah agree that he needs to cheat with the catty blonde-bobbed neighbor Sylvia, and Chuck's not quite sure why he's so disappointed that there is no flinch in Sarah's gaze when she agrees. It's not fair. It's not. And if she's trying to make him feel that same cold reckless frustration, well, she's succeeded.
Just, he wouldn't have picked a tanned blonde trophy wife who looked like she could be Paris Hilton's marginally smarter, significantly more alcoholic cousin.
The first thing he sees when they get back 'home' is the framed wedding portrait, the one he certainly doesn't remember having taken. It's just as fake as Charles Carmichael. He feels so angry, so incredibly betrayed over something that was never his to lose.
He knows he shouldn't. But this was one of the eventualities, one of their plans, and when he comes up silently behind her and slides an arm around Sarah's waist, he feels her tense before she makes herself relax, turning in his arms to face him, chin tilted up to an almost daring angle, her lips slightly parted.
He almost wants Casey to be watching, because this would definitely shut him up.
Part of it is how passive Sarah has to be with this, so when Chuck trails his fingertips up the back of her neck and into her hair, when he kisses her, she keeps her arms at her sides, but her mouth, her tongue tangles with his, and she's gasping, and that's not part of the plan, not at all. His hips pin hers against the countertop, and he folds his fingers around the back of her sundress, between the warmth of the fabric and the warm soft flesh over her spine. He fights his arousal for just long enough, until he's gone too far, and she gasps again when he rolls his hips against hers.
And he pulls back and her mouth is swollen and, and it floods back and he almost can't bear to look into her eyes, but he has to, to make sure he hasn't fucked it all up.
But Sarah is professional, and there's only apology in her eyes as she pats his hip. "I have a headache," she says, and smiles hopefully at him, like this is a dance they go through every day.
But her fingers are tightening in his belt loops, even though the rest of her is still, but he can feel it, in the way the air between them is suddenly hot and charged, and he knows that he can grab her right now and put her on the counter, yank her panties down, and God how she'd look with her head tipped back—
"You have a lot of headaches," he whispers.
It shouldn't be possible, but the entire time Sylvia's wrestling his pants off, he can feel Sarah's fingers at his hip, that soft little moan she made when he pulled back the first time.
--
He steals the picture of the two of them grinning from a snow-blanketed hillside, under knit caps, because it's the one that'll break his heart the least and the CIA owes him some artifact of the life he's only supposed to pretend to live. When she asked for his ring back she was like someone he had never met, someone he's met all too many times. When Ellie, eyes bright with excitement, asks him how it went, he's honest. There is nothing for them. There is no future for them. He's not Charles Carmichael and he never will be.
He keeps trying to tell himself that giving in to this, convincing her that what they both want can't be wrong, won't destroy them, when it's probably the only thing that would.
It's just that, when he lives it again in his dreams that night, there is no gentle restraining hand, and definitely no fucking headache.
Part: 7. nice dream
Author:
ndnickersonPairing/Characters: Chuck/Sarah
Series: Chuck
Word Count: 2260
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Just when Chuck's starting to get a handle on things, he and Sarah have to pose as a married couple.
Spoilers: Set around and during 2x13, Chuck vs the Suburbs.
Warnings: Language and mildly adult situations.
He still forgets, sometimes, just because it makes this little frisson of pleasure slide down her spine, makes her shake herself just a little, makes her smile. And he loves making her smile because he counted the hours between them, knowing as each one passed that it might be sealing off another of their exits, breaking another one of her excuses, bringing her that much closer to leaving him. The day he can't coax a smile from her anymore is the day their end has come, and he is bitterly aware of it.
It's taken a while but he's realized that all of what draws her to him is how he is so unlike the rest of her life, but her work has made it so they can connect on no other level. She wants someone whose motives she doesn't have to analyze; she wants someone simple, normal, uncomplicated. Before Bryce's email, he would have been ashamed, even embarrassed to identify himself that way.
Oh God, if he'd known.
He forgets himself because in those moments he's still Chuck, and she hasn't stayed for the thrill of protecting and guarding the Intersect or for the newfound charms of her cover boyfriend, she's stayed for him. And then her mouth touches his and her fingers twist in his hair and it's all acting, all of it, because the moment he lets himself believe it, he can hear that bruised, gasping voice from the other side of his bed. If he fucks up again he'll lose her.
"You want to come over tonight?" She keeps her voice low, so the words aren't for Morgan and Lester's benefit, but the expression on her face definitely is, and the answering grin on his. During the past week, for benefit of this cover, he's mentally detailed a sexual history they'll never have, the circumstances of their first night together and the little noises she makes.
And then he looks at her and that all melts away for a second, and she's just Sarah, and this is probably for a mission.
For Chuck, anyway. Carmichael would already be planning what wine to pick up on the way over.
He's just beginning to convince himself it's going to work when they're ordered to go undercover.
In the suburbs.
As husband and wife.
--
Casey hands him a plain gold band in his size, of course, and then gets the slightly exasperated look on his face, because he's already planning for an argument.
"If this were up to me, Sarah and I would be the ones undercover. You aren't up to this. You've never been in this deep."
"All we're doing is figuring out what salamander means. We play house, I flash and tell Sarah, bam, back at the Buy More watching Jeff and Lester play hand-truck pinball." Chuck idly tries the ring on again, but slides it off just as quickly. He can already tell this will be hard, and not for whatever reason Casey's about to say, not from his utter inexperience with light weaponry and his propensity to trip over unguarded ottomans.
"From the second," Casey begins, and snaps his fingers, drawing Chuck's attention and making his voice even harsher. "From the second you drive into that subdivision, you have to assume they can hear everything you're saying. Probably see it, too."
"But you guys sweep for bugs all the time—"
"For what we know about. So Chuck, if you want to keep on the outside, if you don't want to be dissected like a lab rat or put in a bunker, you need to remember that every single moment they're watching you, and you have got to be Carmichael. That's it."
Chuck nods. "Okay, okay. Geez. It'll be fine."
"That's been working so far." Chuck shoots him a glance, but Casey's already brushing it off. "At least now you two don't startle like five-year-olds when you get close."
"Hey, as long as it's cover, right?"
Casey nods through the sarcasm. "Exactly right. Keep your head straight and maybe you won't get shot in too many nonessential limbs before it's all over with."
"You really know how to put a guy at ease," Chuck returns, heading back to his place.
He opens the door and in an instant Ellie's gaze has gone from the dish she's drying, to his face, to the gold band still on his finger. Cautious excitement dawns on her face just as panic surges through him.
"Chuck—"
"It was—" He gropes for a second. Ellie is already way too hung up on the idea of Sarah catching her bouquet, moving Chuck in with her, and rearranging his entire life. "Morgan's idea. That we wear friendship rings." He isn't exactly lying. It was just over the course of a very awkward lunch during the winter he was in eighth grade.
"Um... you know you can tell him 'no' occasionally, right?" Ellie, the damp cloth still in her hand, picks up his own and peers at the ring. "Chuck, that looks..." she furrows her brow a little, "way too much like a wedding ring."
"Oh. Oh! No," he says quickly, pulling his hand back as gently as possible. "We didn't go to the courthouse and... no. Not like that. It's okay, Ellie. I'll tell him we need something just a little less conspicuous. Like matching bracelets. Or Hawaiian shirts."
"Like Morgan needs any more excuse to dress like a dork," Ellie sighs, heading back to the sink.
Chuck sighs, heading for his room and imagining Casey, sitting in his apartment with his headphones on, laughing his ass off.
--
Casey finds the bug quickly, allowing them just the faintest glimpse of it before placing it again. They're supposed to be naive newlyweds, not cool efficient spies, so the brownies will stay miked. By Fulcrum. Of course it would be Fulcrum.
Three cameras upstairs, Casey mouthes to the both of them. The quirk of his eyebrow confirms the placement.
So, evil and pervs, Chuck mouthes back, and gets an eyeroll for his trouble and the faintest chuckle from Sarah. She looks at home in the sundress, bent over the kitchen counter, her hair shot gold by the sunlight. She looks at home because this is another few degrees removed from their all too complicated relationship; this is an easy role to play. In and out in a week. And cameras upstairs that they can use to excuse actually acting like a couple, even in private. There will be no privacy.
Newlyweds.
He didn't pack nearly enough condoms.
--
He walks in with their borrowed golden retriever straining on the leash and she's nowhere to be found, until he follows the muted rattle of a hair dryer to the master bath. She's in her underwear, bent over the sink, drying her hair, and his reaction to the sight would be utterly humiliating, if not for the grim hilarity of it. He'd never be here, seeing her like this, unless they were playing at being married, and playing at being married means he has every right to get hard, seeing her this way.
And the memory of her, lying on her side with her back to him, legs tucked up, too quiet in the dark, means he has no right at all to act on it.
The second she catches his gaze, their eyes meeting through the mirror, she stifles a yawn under her palm. "Such a big day," she says brightly, switching off the dryer. "I'm beat. So how was the neighborhood?"
Any flashes is what she means, and despite himself he walks over to the sink, unnecessarily washing his hands, just so he can have an excuse to keep his gaze on her. God, how can a woman in trimmed red lace say she's tired. And red again, red, tight, her lower lip shaking just a little.
He'll buy her gardenias tomorrow just to apologize for what she can no doubt see in his face right now.
"The neighborhood is really nice," he tosses over his shoulder with a smile, taking too long to dry his hands, and when he turns back again she's slipping into a robe, not the sheer kind. Just enough for the cameras, he guesses, not bothering to hide his disappointment, because Carmichael wouldn't. "Are you sure you're tired, hon?" He raises his eyebrows, wiggles them just a little, and in that second he's not Carmichael anymore and his heart is free-falling. Chuck is the one who's going to climb into that bed with Sarah, Chuck is the one who's going to have to keep his distance without benefit of so much as a sheet between them.
And then she puts her palm on his cheek and kisses him gently, close-mouthed, her smile perfectly guileless. "Yes," she apologizes, and he can almost believe she means it. "We have a lot going on tomorrow."
She flips off the light, ending all argument, sliding into some filmy pink negligee, the sheets stiff as she slides between them.
He wakes alone in bed, the scent of her hair still lingering, grateful only invisible Fulcrum cameras bear witness to his frustration.
--
He always wants to ask exactly how they're so sure he won't be trailed to the Buy More, back to his real life, if Fulcrum is so terrifying, if he's so important. It never comes up, though. They have so little regard for his job that any circumstance is enough to send him out on a fake 'install,' put into mortal peril, and force him back in just in time for Emmett's newest indignity.
And then Casey and Sarah agree that he needs to cheat with the catty blonde-bobbed neighbor Sylvia, and Chuck's not quite sure why he's so disappointed that there is no flinch in Sarah's gaze when she agrees. It's not fair. It's not. And if she's trying to make him feel that same cold reckless frustration, well, she's succeeded.
Just, he wouldn't have picked a tanned blonde trophy wife who looked like she could be Paris Hilton's marginally smarter, significantly more alcoholic cousin.
The first thing he sees when they get back 'home' is the framed wedding portrait, the one he certainly doesn't remember having taken. It's just as fake as Charles Carmichael. He feels so angry, so incredibly betrayed over something that was never his to lose.
He knows he shouldn't. But this was one of the eventualities, one of their plans, and when he comes up silently behind her and slides an arm around Sarah's waist, he feels her tense before she makes herself relax, turning in his arms to face him, chin tilted up to an almost daring angle, her lips slightly parted.
He almost wants Casey to be watching, because this would definitely shut him up.
Part of it is how passive Sarah has to be with this, so when Chuck trails his fingertips up the back of her neck and into her hair, when he kisses her, she keeps her arms at her sides, but her mouth, her tongue tangles with his, and she's gasping, and that's not part of the plan, not at all. His hips pin hers against the countertop, and he folds his fingers around the back of her sundress, between the warmth of the fabric and the warm soft flesh over her spine. He fights his arousal for just long enough, until he's gone too far, and she gasps again when he rolls his hips against hers.
And he pulls back and her mouth is swollen and, and it floods back and he almost can't bear to look into her eyes, but he has to, to make sure he hasn't fucked it all up.
But Sarah is professional, and there's only apology in her eyes as she pats his hip. "I have a headache," she says, and smiles hopefully at him, like this is a dance they go through every day.
But her fingers are tightening in his belt loops, even though the rest of her is still, but he can feel it, in the way the air between them is suddenly hot and charged, and he knows that he can grab her right now and put her on the counter, yank her panties down, and God how she'd look with her head tipped back—
"You have a lot of headaches," he whispers.
It shouldn't be possible, but the entire time Sylvia's wrestling his pants off, he can feel Sarah's fingers at his hip, that soft little moan she made when he pulled back the first time.
--
He steals the picture of the two of them grinning from a snow-blanketed hillside, under knit caps, because it's the one that'll break his heart the least and the CIA owes him some artifact of the life he's only supposed to pretend to live. When she asked for his ring back she was like someone he had never met, someone he's met all too many times. When Ellie, eyes bright with excitement, asks him how it went, he's honest. There is nothing for them. There is no future for them. He's not Charles Carmichael and he never will be.
He keeps trying to tell himself that giving in to this, convincing her that what they both want can't be wrong, won't destroy them, when it's probably the only thing that would.
It's just that, when he lives it again in his dreams that night, there is no gentle restraining hand, and definitely no fucking headache.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-23 01:05 pm (UTC)I always wondered how Chuck and Sarah behaved for the cameras, what we didn't see that night. Very convincing storyline! :)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-23 03:55 pm (UTC)I love how you're playing the line between Sarah wanting to give in and Sarah forcing herself to hold back at all costs. That is one of the most interesting dynamics for me and you've got it down perrrrfectly. Hopefully she can't hold back much longer though...
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-23 04:15 pm (UTC)I love that you had Chuck steal that particular picture of them in the snow, 'cause I definitely noticed it when I watched the episode (and therefore means something, clearly).
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-24 05:02 am (UTC)so i feel kind of like it's a concurrent but mild AU, if that makes any sense. ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-24 04:34 pm (UTC)I am utterly convinced that something happened between Best friends and Suburbs because Chuck must have realised that Sarah Walker the Stoic CRIED when she thought he blew up along with the car. He would have done something with that information and I am glad that you are filling all these (now exceptionally significant) caps in the greater scheme of things.
Mild but concurrent AU are the best kind of fic, and you have my full support behind your venture.
P.S. "She flips off the light, ending all argument, sliding into some filmy pink negligee, the sheets stuff as she slides between them." Should that say 'stiff'?
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-24 07:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-11 10:53 pm (UTC)