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ndnickersontitle: just don't let me down
part: 1/3
fandom: chuck
characters/pairing: chuck/sarah, casey
rating: pg-13
word count: 4611
prompt: from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bsalvanera - chuck starts to train as a spy: the infiltration and inducement of enemy personnel (seduction school), and weaponry and hand-to-hand combat.
summary: chuck takes a holiday off from spy school, but he has a homework assignment...
warnings: set during the july 4 after season 2. mild to medium language, subject matter warnings.
author's note: i've made a slight modification: you know that emergency decon shower scene in chuck vs the fat lady? well, we all know the only reason they weren't naked was because we were watching it on NBC. ;) in this story, the Hi-C panic trumped modesty.
also, i've borrowed a little detail from Notorious JMG's "Bright Side" Chuck universe.
--
Agent Jack Shelton was, by far, Chuck's least favorite teacher at Langley. That wasn't saying much. For a month Chuck had been toiling away at the Agency's training camp, limping back to his dorm at night with fresh bruises and sore muscles, learning to do things that, he'd found, he was only proficient in when a game controller was in his hand. He was a crack shot when it came to zombies, not so much when his red-handled gun was slick in his sweaty fist and he could hear his own heart echoing in his ears. The teachers at Langley were all uniformly dour and snippy, as though the entire place had run out of coffee years before and they still hadn't figured out how to deal with it.
Shelton himself was no better or worse than the rest, really. He wore the standard uniform, khakis and a polo, tinted aviator glasses, cocky grin. He had a salt-and-pepper bristle-brush of a mustache and a very high opinion of himself, and Chuck had yet to figure out why.
Considering that Shelton taught seduction, and had yet to demonstrate. Not that Chuck wanted him to demonstrate. Chuck would rather bitch-slap Casey with a baseball bat and accept the consequences than see Shelton work his magic on a lady. Though, from what Chuck could see so far, it wasn't magic. Supposedly it all boiled down to trust and confidence and alcohol.
And Shelton's own opinion of Chuck hadn't improved at all when Chuck had admitted that he might have had a few lessons from Roan Montgomery, whom Shelton railed about given even the slightest provocation.
Five minutes of class left to go. Chuck glanced down at his watch, foot tapping nervously under his desk. After class he was heading straight to the airport; after four weeks of grueling training they were getting the July fourth weekend off, and he was eager to leave the humid soup of the Virginia summer behind.
"Not so fast, gentlemen. You have an assignment this weekend."
Shelton's aide started wheeling a cart full of equipment up the aisle, passing down bulky transponders and what Chuck recognized as primitive bugs in the GL series. Josh, two seats down, turned the transponder over in his hands and glanced up at Shelton, agape.
"What is this, Cold War surplus?"
A few of the other students chuckled. Shelton's grin went from smug to dangerous. It was all in the dimple, Chuck had realized.
"Close, Campbell. But it works. For homework, you are to take the GL-400," Shelton held up the bug, "and the transponder," he hefted the bulkier piece of outdated equipment in his other hand, "making sure to keep the transponder within 400 feet, see, easy to remember there," he grinned, "and seduce someone."
Most of Chuck's classmates grinned. Chuck dropped the transponder so suddenly that the brittle plastic crunched in protest. Chuck gave a vague apologetic smile and turned his panicked gaze back to the front of the room.
"Ground rules. No exes, acquaintances, friends, or current partners! None of your classmates! Keep the bug on for the entire time. Bonus points if you seduce someone of the opposite gender from the one you usually go for. It's up to you whether you go for the whole enchilada, or just stick to the foreplay." He reached into his breast pocket for a toothpick and clamped it between his unnaturally white teeth. "When you come back from your break, turn in two things: the transponder, and one piece of moderate- to high-level intelligence on your mark. I will accept e-mail addresses and passwords, account numbers and PINs, or another piece of information the mark would be highly unlikely to tell anyone of first acquaintance. And I will be checking. Good luck."
Chuck shoved the transponder into his backpack, groaning. Right. Awesome.
He was just shifting his pack to the other shoulder when he reached into the pocket for his iPhone and nearly dropped the whole thing. It was on silent but vibrating, and Sarah Walker's image was grinning at him from the backlit screen. It slipped from his grasp and Chuck made one fruitless snatch for it before the Intersect kicked in and he plucked it gracefully out of the air, two inches above the floor.
Casey and Sarah and Beckman had all warned him to resist using the Intersect if it was at all possible. With the first Intersect that had been entirely out of his hands, but with this one, he could will the flashes. Even so, in the week before he'd left he had been unusually clumsy, and every time, every single damn time, he hadn't been able to stop it, even though in the end it hadn't been much help at all. He felt like Neo, like one of the X-Men, something fantastic.
Something he wasn't allowed to show anyone at Langley, under any circumstances, because they still weren't sure just how deep the Ring's recruitment went.
"Hello? S-Sarah?" Chuck stammered as he brought the phone to his ear, but she was already gone. Chuck sighed in frustration as he turned a corner and almost slammed into Mike Crane.
"Hey, buddy, you're in a hurry."
"Yeah, sorry," Chuck sighed, watching his phone's screen go blank. He had a cover here, too, as Nathan Carmichael, his hair was so close-cropped that it was practically a buzz cut, and his red-handled gun thumped awkwardly on his belt as he shifted his pack again. The red-handled guns were part of the uniform, a way to get the recruits used to the feel of a gun on them at all times, but Chuck would be glad to lose the weight for the next few days.
Mike started rambling on about something and Chuck let his mind wander. Why had Sarah called? They had spoken a few times since he'd left, but only briefly. Being at Langley made him feel like he was moving backward, but then Sarah hadn't wanted to be with him when he was a normal guy, had she. He just wasn't sure if having another Intersect rattling around in his head was too high a price to pay, for having her.
Or not. Between Casey, CIA, and his family, he seemed to be doomed when it came to Sarah and what he wanted.
--
Sarah Walker frowned at her iPhone and hit the "End Call" button, the point of her hip resting against the high table. In Castle's main room, Casey was going over satellite and infrared for their next mission, allotting firepower, plotting entrance routes. He was like a kid in a candy store, with Chuck away. She had to admit, despite the cognitive dissonance of working with an NSA agent without being at gunpoint, and in the absence of the one reason they had been paired in the first place, John Casey was probably the best partner she'd ever had.
Above their heads a hammer struck the floor and someone let out a string of muffled curses. The Orange Orange had closed a day after Chuck left and her office space was "undergoing renovations, get ready for an exciting new taste experience coming Fall 2009!", and so she had been able to forego the orange tank and white jeans for her preferred outfit of unrelieved black on black. Casey had made some comment about how she'd stopped wearing the low-cut stuff now that Bartowski wasn't around to see it, and had been on the floor five seconds later.
He might be a good partner but that didn't mean he knew when to shut his mouth.
Still frowning, her brow furrowed the tiniest bit, Sarah reholstered her cell and strolled back into the main room. "Has Beckman said we need to take Chuck along for this?"
Casey snorted. "We'll be in and out before Recruit Spazz gets off the plane. Besides, after last time?"
Sarah nodded absently, pulling up a blueprint of the El Rey estate, checking for alternate exits as she pointedly tried not to remember what a huge mess that last mission had been, the mission that finally convinced Beckman to allow Chuck into spy school, even with the risk it could be to his cover, and finally convinced Chuck that he needed some formal training beyond the occasional bout of sparring or makeshift target practice. It had been simple, really, like all their other missions, but it had ended when, at three o'clock in the morning, she and Casey had tracked Chuck's GPS watch to a quarry in the middle of nowhere, because he definitely had not stayed in the car, and in the spy version of rock-paper-scissors, unexpected taser still beat hand-to-hand combat. She'd had to perform CPR on him, until he sputtered out half a lungful of water and gasped his breath back and she had been drenched anyway, and blinking water out of her eyes, she definitely had not been crying.
One lie to Ellie, two suitcases, and twelve hours later, he was on his way to Langley.
"Is his new place set up yet?"
Casey chuckled. "Yeah, no. Guess the stimulus money hasn't trickled down into the federal government yet."
Sarah's phone chimed from her hip and she frowned at it, smoothly unholstering it. "Damn spotty reception," she snarled, swinging on her heel and heading for the stairs before she remembered that she had to take the back entrance.
Chuck's voice on her voicemail was the first time she'd heard it in over a week. "Hey, Sarah, sorry I missed your call. Look, after I get in tonight, Ellie and I have some plans, but I was thinking maybe we could meet... tomorrow? Ish? Like late-- maybe early afternoon, catch a movie, y'know?" He chuckled nervously. "Anyway, I'm about to board, but I'll call you tomorrow. Punch Casey for me. Lightly."
Sarah tapped "Call back," but Chuck's voicemail clicked on immediately. She headed back into Castle, chewing her lower lip. Casey was loading a duffel.
"Didn't you tell me Ellie and Devon left this morning?"
"Yeah, Devon came over and asked me to watch their place while they're gone. Wine country, destination wedding, blah blah." Casey's eyes lit up as he tossed a few mags into the duffel.
"As in, for the whole weekend?"
"Why, Walker? Got some plans for Chuck's old room while he's away?"
Sarah picked up the crumpled wrapper from Casey's morning biscuit and tossed it at him, smirking as he turned, the waxed paper bouncing harmlessly off his shoulder. "If Ellie's going to be gone, why would Chuck lie and say he'll be with her tonight?"
"Don't know, don't care," Casey returned, heading to the armory for his vest.
"You think you can handle this by yourself, cowboy?" Sarah called, bringing up the familiar surveillance feed from the courtyard outside Ellie's place.
"You're not coming? I'm heartbroken," Casey grinned. "All the more for me."
Sarah considered going for one of her throwing knives, but decided against it, as she checked Chuck's flight schedule.
"Hey," Casey called, heading for the back entrance. "You know, it's probably real simple. He just has a hot date tonight."
Sarah's knife thudded into the doorframe, dead centered on the space where Casey's nose had been two seconds before.
--
At first, Sarah had been intrigued.
She hadn't exactly been all that secretive about it, but once she'd spotted Chuck leaving the terminal, she hadn't had time to intercept him before he'd gone immediately to the rental car shuttle. Once there, she watched him debate before choosing a late-model coupe, maybe a little flashier than she would have expected, but nothing too over the top. Not that she had particularly been the best example in that regard, she smirked, gunning the Porsche's engine.
His next stop was a department store. He walked in looking beaten but resolved, his t-shirt and jeans wrinkled and shapeless from the long flight. He walked back out with a plastic-shrouded garment the same bulk as a suit tossed over his shoulder, a shoebox tucked into the crook of his other elbow.
Curiouser and curiouser. She knew for a fact that the one suit he owned didn't fit him all that well and that he'd always left his various disguises in Castle, whenever possible, to avoid raising Ellie's suspicions about his suddenly prolific wardrobe.
She thought again of Casey's parting jab and shook her head briskly, adjusting her binoculars.
Sarah could follow Chuck back to his sister's apartment in her sleep, and practically had a few times before. She kept well back in the traffic and continued up to the next exit, looping around, finding a vantage point near his probable route, well concealed since her car would stick out to him like a sore thumb. When he came back out he was wearing a lightweight summer suit she'd never seen before, hair freshly done, smoked aviators in place, and Sarah actually bit her lip.
It was different when she knew what he was doing. She had no clue what his game was, now, and that frightened her. He stowed a duffel bag in the trunk, pushed something into his jacket pocket, and swung behind the wheel. When Sarah's phone rang she answered it without looking at it, her gaze still trained on him.
"Walker."
"Bartowski getting ready for his date?"
"Don't tell me you're already done."
"In and out in an hour flat. Told you it wouldn't take long. Just one last thing I have to check on. You on Intersect detail tonight?"
"You available for backup?"
"He's home for the weekend from spy school, Walker. What do you think's gonna go wrong?"
Sarah snorted. "This is Chuck we're talking about, remember? He's barely able to go twenty-four hours without running into an agent."
"Yeah," Casey grudgingly admitted. "I'll be on standby."
--
Once he was inside the bar, Chuck stood still for a moment, letting his eyes adjust, taking in his surroundings. He was in a brand-new, so shiny it probably still had a tag attached that he'd missed, summer suit, nice shoes, freshly shaved, and felt like a total asshole.
It was bad enough, doing this when he had been dating the girl for three months straight, had a good idea that she was interested in going to bed with him, and had a bottle of good wine (or, maybe, a white dinner jacket and a single red rose) at the ready. This? He wasn't made for this. Shelton had continually emphasized that enemy agents were always on their guard and ready for this kind of attack, that it had to be perfectly natural, and that in the morning, it was just a matter of spycraft and short-term cons and the game. Everyone involved already knew the rules.
This? This felt like being a whore. For a homework assignment.
The sun was still just visible above the horizon, and it was really too early for this, but Chuck scoped out his possible marks anyway, as he sauntered to the bar, narrowly avoiding being bowled over by a hastily pushed-out chair on his way. He ordered whatever was on tap and slid onto a barstool, long legs perched awkward and gangly, knees out. A trio of female workmates giggled and sipped margaritas in a booth near the door; none were particularly attractive and Chuck didn't like his chances, so he let his gaze drift again, covering with a long sip of beer.
He just wanted to get it over with. He just wanted to have this behind him so he could go see a movie with Sarah, maybe, if some enormous national emergency didn't intervene, and they could laugh about it (except there was no way in hell he was ever going to tell her anything about this), and if this worked, well, maybe he'd have something new to try out on her, besides honesty, which didn't really seem to work out all that well.
He studied a redhead perched at the other end of the bar by her reflection in the mirror. She wore a bright tank-top but kept tugging at a cropped short-sleeved cardigan buttoned over it, and she periodically fiddled with her drink, checked her watch and cell, and shifted on the stool, glancing down at her outfit. When she glanced up, her gaze lingered on the bartender, and she was pretty, if shy and moderately overweight.
Oh, oh God, break some wallflower's heart and this will really eat you alive.
Chuck shrugged, tossing back the rest of his beer as he shifted his attention to the game playing on the television angled in from the corner. Redhead would be a good candidate, even though he could already feel himself becoming apologetic and sympathetic and utterly remorseful over what he was about to do, if someone else didn't walk in.
And then she did.
--
"Walker."
"What?"
Sarah was leaning forward in the driver's seat, peering into the vanity mirror and expertly smudging her eyeshadow to give that sultry-not-slutty look, debating between the auburn and the chestnut wigs, when she stopped and shifted the phone against her shoulder. "Casey, what?" she asked, brusque and clipped, a bad feeling crawling up her spine at his silence.
"I have Bartowski on GPS, are you still with him?"
"I'm not—" Sarah stopped, started again. "I'm at his location. Does this have anything to do with that little 'thing' you had to 'check on'?"
"You know how we thought the buyer was Sanchez? He was the intermediary. All I could get out of Gomez and his idiot team leader was a code word, but it's not returning anything in the database. If we don't get to the real buyer—"
"I know, I know," Sarah cut him off impatiently, snapping her mirror back up. "What's the code word?"
"Noche roja."
--
The woman (Chuck noticed only then that he was thinking of the redhead as a girl) who stalked into the bar was angry, bristling with it, her light eyes flashing, the pierce of her gaze turning everyone else's away. She was almost quivering with indignation as she slapped a metallic fringed clutch onto the bar and ordered a mojito, her voice carrying just that slightest hint of an exotic accent. She shifted on her heels, revealing an expanse of tanned and toned inner thigh, and Chuck's gaze went back to his drink so fast he practically got whiplash.
There was out of his league (Sarah Walker), and then there was out of his league (Sarah Walker, most of the Pussycat Dolls, Angelina Jolie). This woman was definitely the latter.
Then Shelton's commanding bark of a voice came back to him, and Chuck flinched.
Confidence is the key. There are no women out of your league, even if they think they are. And they can feel it when you are sure of yourself. Sometimes you have to knock it up a notch to smug bastard, but start low key.
And no matter what, remember that you are not desperate. There are always other women, even if she's the only one who has the missile launch codes you need stuffed in her bra.
And, Chuck made a mental note, no matter what happened between him and the exotic woman on his right, he was sure there was no way he was going to break her heart. He put a smile on his face and, when the bartender, wide-eyed, brought her drink over and she snapped open her bag, Chuck made a swift motion.
"It's on me," he said, and turned to nod at her. Her gaze flicked over him, and when it rose back to his face, a slight, almost predatory smile was on her lips.
On the pretext of finding money for the bill, Chuck reached into his pocket and managed to turn on the transmitter. "Charles Carmichael," he nodded, offering his hand.
"Charles Carmichael," she repeated, and oh, there was definitely some gleam in her eye now, like either she'd heard of him or all her favorite lovers had been named Charles.
He had a definite feeling it was the former.
--
Sarah swiftly opened her glove compartment and went for her backup piece, looked down at her dress's silhouette, and shrugged. Where Chuck was concerned it was always better to have more firepower than less, but the bulk of a gun under the eggplant jersey definitely wouldn't stay hidden for long.
She sighed as she slotted her mic into a bracelet, secured the earwig, and shut her eyes. Just once... well, one more time, she amended, she'd like an evening with Chuck that didn't involve Casey barking warnings into her ear and Chuck himself dodging bullets. Not that this would ever have counted. Whatever was going on in there, he hadn't wanted her in on.
She couldn't blame him.
Well, yeah, actually, she thought, tossing her keys into her clutch and sweeping the door shut behind her, she could. He didn't have to upload the Intersect before destroying it. And she hated, on the one hand, that her speech to him about being a hero had probably had a lot to do with his choice, and on the other hand that she had been ready to walk away from all this and give them a chance, and he would never know that, and he had taken it out of her hands that night. She couldn't walk away while he was still in it, and he just couldn't walk away, period.
She had no illusions that he had done it for her.
Except that every night since he'd left for Langley, she'd dreamt about all the ways this could end badly, and then she was terrified that he had done it for her.
Sarah gathered her newly auburn hair gently in one fist and let it fall, squared her shoulders, and walked into the bar.
Without her even trying, her gaze immediately centered on him, sitting at the bar, turned on his barstool so he was facing a dark brunette woman, also facing the door (at least they'd been able to teach him something), and Sarah's eyes locked with Chuck's, and she saw the grin that began to light up his face before he successfully quashed it, but he kept glancing over at her, and she was exasperated (and charmed) at how badly he hid it.
She was wearing the dress he'd brought her, to wear to her high school reunion. She hadn't planned on it, it had just been the most convenient, she'd already planned on hissing to Casey when he inevitably made some crack about it.
And it was taking everything she had, not to grin back at him.
She tucked a strand of synthetic auburn behind one ear and tapped her lobe, giving him the signal to go along with whatever she was about to say, and saw absolutely no hint of recognition in his face. Maybe he was getting better at this. Maybe he was about to blow it.
Sarah walked over to the bar and ordered a martini, keeping her gaze trained on Chuck through his reflection, then turned around to study the rest of the patrons.
She just needed five minutes with him, probably less, but Chuck seemed entirely enthralled with whatever the brunette was saying, and Sarah didn't even know her smile had frozen on her face until she caught sight of her own reflection again. He was flirting with her.
In one blindingly angry second Sarah cursed Bryce for sending Chuck the Intersect in the first place, for going and getting himself killed so that Chuck would feel somehow compelled to upload the second one, at Chuck for ever telling her that he loved her, at all of it. She hated the fact that the CIA and NSA had gotten along just fine until this damn stupid project, that she was still involved in it, that she cared at all about what he was doing tonight. That if they didn't intercept that intel, countless military bases would be at risk.
And one martini wasn't anywhere near enough. She tossed it back just as the brunette's cell phone started to ring.
And then she saw Chuck's eyes close in that long blink that meant he was having a flash.
--
Chuck had had many, many more near-death experiences than he'd ever in his wildest nightmares expected to have, and one moment that kept coming back to him, during the montage, was the pure electricity that had sizzled over his skin the first second he had ever seen Sarah Walker. It had been entirely unlike anything else he'd ever felt, the kind of thing he'd thought only existed in sappy romantic comedies, or, maybe, for his sister Ellie when she saw Devon. That was it. Sometimes he thought he'd just been chasing that feeling for two years, that spark, even though it had been subtly different every time he'd seen her.
Locking gazes still did it to him, even moreso after a month away. And there was just something about seeing her in the dress that he'd picked out for her, purple like the bridesmaid's dress she had been wearing when they had been dancing in the courtyard and she'd told him that he was a hero, no matter what else he thought.
From the second he'd had this—thing—in his head, she had been angry, so angry it was a relief to leave. Nothing had been right.
And there had to be something wrong because he could see it in her face, now, in a way he'd never been able to before, that she was vulnerable and angry. Her body language was screaming and if she was ever a deep-cover operative, singlehandedly he had managed to crack her in half.
Chuck cursed everything, the darkly seductive brunette at his left practically vibrating with her anger and sensuality, the bug in his pocket, Shelton, Sarah for not taking his phone call at face value and tracking him here, here of all places, the worst possible second—
And then the woman, she'd introduced herself as Lana, her bag started ringing, and she flipped one smooth wing of dark hair over one shoulder and answered her phone, her voice going lower, clipped. She slipped off the stool, shooting him the most perfunctory apologetic grin before ducking into the hallway outside the restrooms, and he managed to nod back normally.
When her voice was lower like that, the Intersect had started vibrating in his head. It wasn't true, but that was how it felt, like a hard drive kicking on, taking the enormous silver and ruby ring she wore on her left hand, a birthmark on her neck, the voice—
"Chuck—"
He could actually feel the heat radiating off Sarah's skin, which should've been impossible.
"Her name isn't Lana," he muttered under his breath, keeping his gaze on the hall where she'd disappeared as he angled his body slightly toward Sarah.
"Chuck, Casey and I were assigned to intercept some intel and our timetable is off, we need to find it before midnight, do the words—"
Noche roja, he saw at the top of the file, likely candidate for—
"—noche roja mean anything to you?"
Chuck swung off the barstool without even glancing back, knowing Sarah would follow him. "I can give you a pretty good guess," he sighed, heading for the hallway. "I was probably just trying to pick her up."
--
part 2 (pg-13) . part 3 (nc-17)
part: 1/3
fandom: chuck
characters/pairing: chuck/sarah, casey
rating: pg-13
word count: 4611
prompt: from
bsalvanera - chuck starts to train as a spy: the infiltration and inducement of enemy personnel (seduction school), and weaponry and hand-to-hand combat.summary: chuck takes a holiday off from spy school, but he has a homework assignment...
warnings: set during the july 4 after season 2. mild to medium language, subject matter warnings.
author's note: i've made a slight modification: you know that emergency decon shower scene in chuck vs the fat lady? well, we all know the only reason they weren't naked was because we were watching it on NBC. ;) in this story, the Hi-C panic trumped modesty.
also, i've borrowed a little detail from Notorious JMG's "Bright Side" Chuck universe.
--
Agent Jack Shelton was, by far, Chuck's least favorite teacher at Langley. That wasn't saying much. For a month Chuck had been toiling away at the Agency's training camp, limping back to his dorm at night with fresh bruises and sore muscles, learning to do things that, he'd found, he was only proficient in when a game controller was in his hand. He was a crack shot when it came to zombies, not so much when his red-handled gun was slick in his sweaty fist and he could hear his own heart echoing in his ears. The teachers at Langley were all uniformly dour and snippy, as though the entire place had run out of coffee years before and they still hadn't figured out how to deal with it.
Shelton himself was no better or worse than the rest, really. He wore the standard uniform, khakis and a polo, tinted aviator glasses, cocky grin. He had a salt-and-pepper bristle-brush of a mustache and a very high opinion of himself, and Chuck had yet to figure out why.
Considering that Shelton taught seduction, and had yet to demonstrate. Not that Chuck wanted him to demonstrate. Chuck would rather bitch-slap Casey with a baseball bat and accept the consequences than see Shelton work his magic on a lady. Though, from what Chuck could see so far, it wasn't magic. Supposedly it all boiled down to trust and confidence and alcohol.
And Shelton's own opinion of Chuck hadn't improved at all when Chuck had admitted that he might have had a few lessons from Roan Montgomery, whom Shelton railed about given even the slightest provocation.
Five minutes of class left to go. Chuck glanced down at his watch, foot tapping nervously under his desk. After class he was heading straight to the airport; after four weeks of grueling training they were getting the July fourth weekend off, and he was eager to leave the humid soup of the Virginia summer behind.
"Not so fast, gentlemen. You have an assignment this weekend."
Shelton's aide started wheeling a cart full of equipment up the aisle, passing down bulky transponders and what Chuck recognized as primitive bugs in the GL series. Josh, two seats down, turned the transponder over in his hands and glanced up at Shelton, agape.
"What is this, Cold War surplus?"
A few of the other students chuckled. Shelton's grin went from smug to dangerous. It was all in the dimple, Chuck had realized.
"Close, Campbell. But it works. For homework, you are to take the GL-400," Shelton held up the bug, "and the transponder," he hefted the bulkier piece of outdated equipment in his other hand, "making sure to keep the transponder within 400 feet, see, easy to remember there," he grinned, "and seduce someone."
Most of Chuck's classmates grinned. Chuck dropped the transponder so suddenly that the brittle plastic crunched in protest. Chuck gave a vague apologetic smile and turned his panicked gaze back to the front of the room.
"Ground rules. No exes, acquaintances, friends, or current partners! None of your classmates! Keep the bug on for the entire time. Bonus points if you seduce someone of the opposite gender from the one you usually go for. It's up to you whether you go for the whole enchilada, or just stick to the foreplay." He reached into his breast pocket for a toothpick and clamped it between his unnaturally white teeth. "When you come back from your break, turn in two things: the transponder, and one piece of moderate- to high-level intelligence on your mark. I will accept e-mail addresses and passwords, account numbers and PINs, or another piece of information the mark would be highly unlikely to tell anyone of first acquaintance. And I will be checking. Good luck."
Chuck shoved the transponder into his backpack, groaning. Right. Awesome.
He was just shifting his pack to the other shoulder when he reached into the pocket for his iPhone and nearly dropped the whole thing. It was on silent but vibrating, and Sarah Walker's image was grinning at him from the backlit screen. It slipped from his grasp and Chuck made one fruitless snatch for it before the Intersect kicked in and he plucked it gracefully out of the air, two inches above the floor.
Casey and Sarah and Beckman had all warned him to resist using the Intersect if it was at all possible. With the first Intersect that had been entirely out of his hands, but with this one, he could will the flashes. Even so, in the week before he'd left he had been unusually clumsy, and every time, every single damn time, he hadn't been able to stop it, even though in the end it hadn't been much help at all. He felt like Neo, like one of the X-Men, something fantastic.
Something he wasn't allowed to show anyone at Langley, under any circumstances, because they still weren't sure just how deep the Ring's recruitment went.
"Hello? S-Sarah?" Chuck stammered as he brought the phone to his ear, but she was already gone. Chuck sighed in frustration as he turned a corner and almost slammed into Mike Crane.
"Hey, buddy, you're in a hurry."
"Yeah, sorry," Chuck sighed, watching his phone's screen go blank. He had a cover here, too, as Nathan Carmichael, his hair was so close-cropped that it was practically a buzz cut, and his red-handled gun thumped awkwardly on his belt as he shifted his pack again. The red-handled guns were part of the uniform, a way to get the recruits used to the feel of a gun on them at all times, but Chuck would be glad to lose the weight for the next few days.
Mike started rambling on about something and Chuck let his mind wander. Why had Sarah called? They had spoken a few times since he'd left, but only briefly. Being at Langley made him feel like he was moving backward, but then Sarah hadn't wanted to be with him when he was a normal guy, had she. He just wasn't sure if having another Intersect rattling around in his head was too high a price to pay, for having her.
Or not. Between Casey, CIA, and his family, he seemed to be doomed when it came to Sarah and what he wanted.
--
Sarah Walker frowned at her iPhone and hit the "End Call" button, the point of her hip resting against the high table. In Castle's main room, Casey was going over satellite and infrared for their next mission, allotting firepower, plotting entrance routes. He was like a kid in a candy store, with Chuck away. She had to admit, despite the cognitive dissonance of working with an NSA agent without being at gunpoint, and in the absence of the one reason they had been paired in the first place, John Casey was probably the best partner she'd ever had.
Above their heads a hammer struck the floor and someone let out a string of muffled curses. The Orange Orange had closed a day after Chuck left and her office space was "undergoing renovations, get ready for an exciting new taste experience coming Fall 2009!", and so she had been able to forego the orange tank and white jeans for her preferred outfit of unrelieved black on black. Casey had made some comment about how she'd stopped wearing the low-cut stuff now that Bartowski wasn't around to see it, and had been on the floor five seconds later.
He might be a good partner but that didn't mean he knew when to shut his mouth.
Still frowning, her brow furrowed the tiniest bit, Sarah reholstered her cell and strolled back into the main room. "Has Beckman said we need to take Chuck along for this?"
Casey snorted. "We'll be in and out before Recruit Spazz gets off the plane. Besides, after last time?"
Sarah nodded absently, pulling up a blueprint of the El Rey estate, checking for alternate exits as she pointedly tried not to remember what a huge mess that last mission had been, the mission that finally convinced Beckman to allow Chuck into spy school, even with the risk it could be to his cover, and finally convinced Chuck that he needed some formal training beyond the occasional bout of sparring or makeshift target practice. It had been simple, really, like all their other missions, but it had ended when, at three o'clock in the morning, she and Casey had tracked Chuck's GPS watch to a quarry in the middle of nowhere, because he definitely had not stayed in the car, and in the spy version of rock-paper-scissors, unexpected taser still beat hand-to-hand combat. She'd had to perform CPR on him, until he sputtered out half a lungful of water and gasped his breath back and she had been drenched anyway, and blinking water out of her eyes, she definitely had not been crying.
One lie to Ellie, two suitcases, and twelve hours later, he was on his way to Langley.
"Is his new place set up yet?"
Casey chuckled. "Yeah, no. Guess the stimulus money hasn't trickled down into the federal government yet."
Sarah's phone chimed from her hip and she frowned at it, smoothly unholstering it. "Damn spotty reception," she snarled, swinging on her heel and heading for the stairs before she remembered that she had to take the back entrance.
Chuck's voice on her voicemail was the first time she'd heard it in over a week. "Hey, Sarah, sorry I missed your call. Look, after I get in tonight, Ellie and I have some plans, but I was thinking maybe we could meet... tomorrow? Ish? Like late-- maybe early afternoon, catch a movie, y'know?" He chuckled nervously. "Anyway, I'm about to board, but I'll call you tomorrow. Punch Casey for me. Lightly."
Sarah tapped "Call back," but Chuck's voicemail clicked on immediately. She headed back into Castle, chewing her lower lip. Casey was loading a duffel.
"Didn't you tell me Ellie and Devon left this morning?"
"Yeah, Devon came over and asked me to watch their place while they're gone. Wine country, destination wedding, blah blah." Casey's eyes lit up as he tossed a few mags into the duffel.
"As in, for the whole weekend?"
"Why, Walker? Got some plans for Chuck's old room while he's away?"
Sarah picked up the crumpled wrapper from Casey's morning biscuit and tossed it at him, smirking as he turned, the waxed paper bouncing harmlessly off his shoulder. "If Ellie's going to be gone, why would Chuck lie and say he'll be with her tonight?"
"Don't know, don't care," Casey returned, heading to the armory for his vest.
"You think you can handle this by yourself, cowboy?" Sarah called, bringing up the familiar surveillance feed from the courtyard outside Ellie's place.
"You're not coming? I'm heartbroken," Casey grinned. "All the more for me."
Sarah considered going for one of her throwing knives, but decided against it, as she checked Chuck's flight schedule.
"Hey," Casey called, heading for the back entrance. "You know, it's probably real simple. He just has a hot date tonight."
Sarah's knife thudded into the doorframe, dead centered on the space where Casey's nose had been two seconds before.
--
At first, Sarah had been intrigued.
She hadn't exactly been all that secretive about it, but once she'd spotted Chuck leaving the terminal, she hadn't had time to intercept him before he'd gone immediately to the rental car shuttle. Once there, she watched him debate before choosing a late-model coupe, maybe a little flashier than she would have expected, but nothing too over the top. Not that she had particularly been the best example in that regard, she smirked, gunning the Porsche's engine.
His next stop was a department store. He walked in looking beaten but resolved, his t-shirt and jeans wrinkled and shapeless from the long flight. He walked back out with a plastic-shrouded garment the same bulk as a suit tossed over his shoulder, a shoebox tucked into the crook of his other elbow.
Curiouser and curiouser. She knew for a fact that the one suit he owned didn't fit him all that well and that he'd always left his various disguises in Castle, whenever possible, to avoid raising Ellie's suspicions about his suddenly prolific wardrobe.
She thought again of Casey's parting jab and shook her head briskly, adjusting her binoculars.
Sarah could follow Chuck back to his sister's apartment in her sleep, and practically had a few times before. She kept well back in the traffic and continued up to the next exit, looping around, finding a vantage point near his probable route, well concealed since her car would stick out to him like a sore thumb. When he came back out he was wearing a lightweight summer suit she'd never seen before, hair freshly done, smoked aviators in place, and Sarah actually bit her lip.
It was different when she knew what he was doing. She had no clue what his game was, now, and that frightened her. He stowed a duffel bag in the trunk, pushed something into his jacket pocket, and swung behind the wheel. When Sarah's phone rang she answered it without looking at it, her gaze still trained on him.
"Walker."
"Bartowski getting ready for his date?"
"Don't tell me you're already done."
"In and out in an hour flat. Told you it wouldn't take long. Just one last thing I have to check on. You on Intersect detail tonight?"
"You available for backup?"
"He's home for the weekend from spy school, Walker. What do you think's gonna go wrong?"
Sarah snorted. "This is Chuck we're talking about, remember? He's barely able to go twenty-four hours without running into an agent."
"Yeah," Casey grudgingly admitted. "I'll be on standby."
--
Once he was inside the bar, Chuck stood still for a moment, letting his eyes adjust, taking in his surroundings. He was in a brand-new, so shiny it probably still had a tag attached that he'd missed, summer suit, nice shoes, freshly shaved, and felt like a total asshole.
It was bad enough, doing this when he had been dating the girl for three months straight, had a good idea that she was interested in going to bed with him, and had a bottle of good wine (or, maybe, a white dinner jacket and a single red rose) at the ready. This? He wasn't made for this. Shelton had continually emphasized that enemy agents were always on their guard and ready for this kind of attack, that it had to be perfectly natural, and that in the morning, it was just a matter of spycraft and short-term cons and the game. Everyone involved already knew the rules.
This? This felt like being a whore. For a homework assignment.
The sun was still just visible above the horizon, and it was really too early for this, but Chuck scoped out his possible marks anyway, as he sauntered to the bar, narrowly avoiding being bowled over by a hastily pushed-out chair on his way. He ordered whatever was on tap and slid onto a barstool, long legs perched awkward and gangly, knees out. A trio of female workmates giggled and sipped margaritas in a booth near the door; none were particularly attractive and Chuck didn't like his chances, so he let his gaze drift again, covering with a long sip of beer.
He just wanted to get it over with. He just wanted to have this behind him so he could go see a movie with Sarah, maybe, if some enormous national emergency didn't intervene, and they could laugh about it (except there was no way in hell he was ever going to tell her anything about this), and if this worked, well, maybe he'd have something new to try out on her, besides honesty, which didn't really seem to work out all that well.
He studied a redhead perched at the other end of the bar by her reflection in the mirror. She wore a bright tank-top but kept tugging at a cropped short-sleeved cardigan buttoned over it, and she periodically fiddled with her drink, checked her watch and cell, and shifted on the stool, glancing down at her outfit. When she glanced up, her gaze lingered on the bartender, and she was pretty, if shy and moderately overweight.
Oh, oh God, break some wallflower's heart and this will really eat you alive.
Chuck shrugged, tossing back the rest of his beer as he shifted his attention to the game playing on the television angled in from the corner. Redhead would be a good candidate, even though he could already feel himself becoming apologetic and sympathetic and utterly remorseful over what he was about to do, if someone else didn't walk in.
And then she did.
--
"Walker."
"What?"
Sarah was leaning forward in the driver's seat, peering into the vanity mirror and expertly smudging her eyeshadow to give that sultry-not-slutty look, debating between the auburn and the chestnut wigs, when she stopped and shifted the phone against her shoulder. "Casey, what?" she asked, brusque and clipped, a bad feeling crawling up her spine at his silence.
"I have Bartowski on GPS, are you still with him?"
"I'm not—" Sarah stopped, started again. "I'm at his location. Does this have anything to do with that little 'thing' you had to 'check on'?"
"You know how we thought the buyer was Sanchez? He was the intermediary. All I could get out of Gomez and his idiot team leader was a code word, but it's not returning anything in the database. If we don't get to the real buyer—"
"I know, I know," Sarah cut him off impatiently, snapping her mirror back up. "What's the code word?"
"Noche roja."
--
The woman (Chuck noticed only then that he was thinking of the redhead as a girl) who stalked into the bar was angry, bristling with it, her light eyes flashing, the pierce of her gaze turning everyone else's away. She was almost quivering with indignation as she slapped a metallic fringed clutch onto the bar and ordered a mojito, her voice carrying just that slightest hint of an exotic accent. She shifted on her heels, revealing an expanse of tanned and toned inner thigh, and Chuck's gaze went back to his drink so fast he practically got whiplash.
There was out of his league (Sarah Walker), and then there was out of his league (Sarah Walker, most of the Pussycat Dolls, Angelina Jolie). This woman was definitely the latter.
Then Shelton's commanding bark of a voice came back to him, and Chuck flinched.
Confidence is the key. There are no women out of your league, even if they think they are. And they can feel it when you are sure of yourself. Sometimes you have to knock it up a notch to smug bastard, but start low key.
And no matter what, remember that you are not desperate. There are always other women, even if she's the only one who has the missile launch codes you need stuffed in her bra.
And, Chuck made a mental note, no matter what happened between him and the exotic woman on his right, he was sure there was no way he was going to break her heart. He put a smile on his face and, when the bartender, wide-eyed, brought her drink over and she snapped open her bag, Chuck made a swift motion.
"It's on me," he said, and turned to nod at her. Her gaze flicked over him, and when it rose back to his face, a slight, almost predatory smile was on her lips.
On the pretext of finding money for the bill, Chuck reached into his pocket and managed to turn on the transmitter. "Charles Carmichael," he nodded, offering his hand.
"Charles Carmichael," she repeated, and oh, there was definitely some gleam in her eye now, like either she'd heard of him or all her favorite lovers had been named Charles.
He had a definite feeling it was the former.
--
Sarah swiftly opened her glove compartment and went for her backup piece, looked down at her dress's silhouette, and shrugged. Where Chuck was concerned it was always better to have more firepower than less, but the bulk of a gun under the eggplant jersey definitely wouldn't stay hidden for long.
She sighed as she slotted her mic into a bracelet, secured the earwig, and shut her eyes. Just once... well, one more time, she amended, she'd like an evening with Chuck that didn't involve Casey barking warnings into her ear and Chuck himself dodging bullets. Not that this would ever have counted. Whatever was going on in there, he hadn't wanted her in on.
She couldn't blame him.
Well, yeah, actually, she thought, tossing her keys into her clutch and sweeping the door shut behind her, she could. He didn't have to upload the Intersect before destroying it. And she hated, on the one hand, that her speech to him about being a hero had probably had a lot to do with his choice, and on the other hand that she had been ready to walk away from all this and give them a chance, and he would never know that, and he had taken it out of her hands that night. She couldn't walk away while he was still in it, and he just couldn't walk away, period.
She had no illusions that he had done it for her.
Except that every night since he'd left for Langley, she'd dreamt about all the ways this could end badly, and then she was terrified that he had done it for her.
Sarah gathered her newly auburn hair gently in one fist and let it fall, squared her shoulders, and walked into the bar.
Without her even trying, her gaze immediately centered on him, sitting at the bar, turned on his barstool so he was facing a dark brunette woman, also facing the door (at least they'd been able to teach him something), and Sarah's eyes locked with Chuck's, and she saw the grin that began to light up his face before he successfully quashed it, but he kept glancing over at her, and she was exasperated (and charmed) at how badly he hid it.
She was wearing the dress he'd brought her, to wear to her high school reunion. She hadn't planned on it, it had just been the most convenient, she'd already planned on hissing to Casey when he inevitably made some crack about it.
And it was taking everything she had, not to grin back at him.
She tucked a strand of synthetic auburn behind one ear and tapped her lobe, giving him the signal to go along with whatever she was about to say, and saw absolutely no hint of recognition in his face. Maybe he was getting better at this. Maybe he was about to blow it.
Sarah walked over to the bar and ordered a martini, keeping her gaze trained on Chuck through his reflection, then turned around to study the rest of the patrons.
She just needed five minutes with him, probably less, but Chuck seemed entirely enthralled with whatever the brunette was saying, and Sarah didn't even know her smile had frozen on her face until she caught sight of her own reflection again. He was flirting with her.
In one blindingly angry second Sarah cursed Bryce for sending Chuck the Intersect in the first place, for going and getting himself killed so that Chuck would feel somehow compelled to upload the second one, at Chuck for ever telling her that he loved her, at all of it. She hated the fact that the CIA and NSA had gotten along just fine until this damn stupid project, that she was still involved in it, that she cared at all about what he was doing tonight. That if they didn't intercept that intel, countless military bases would be at risk.
And one martini wasn't anywhere near enough. She tossed it back just as the brunette's cell phone started to ring.
And then she saw Chuck's eyes close in that long blink that meant he was having a flash.
--
Chuck had had many, many more near-death experiences than he'd ever in his wildest nightmares expected to have, and one moment that kept coming back to him, during the montage, was the pure electricity that had sizzled over his skin the first second he had ever seen Sarah Walker. It had been entirely unlike anything else he'd ever felt, the kind of thing he'd thought only existed in sappy romantic comedies, or, maybe, for his sister Ellie when she saw Devon. That was it. Sometimes he thought he'd just been chasing that feeling for two years, that spark, even though it had been subtly different every time he'd seen her.
Locking gazes still did it to him, even moreso after a month away. And there was just something about seeing her in the dress that he'd picked out for her, purple like the bridesmaid's dress she had been wearing when they had been dancing in the courtyard and she'd told him that he was a hero, no matter what else he thought.
From the second he'd had this—thing—in his head, she had been angry, so angry it was a relief to leave. Nothing had been right.
And there had to be something wrong because he could see it in her face, now, in a way he'd never been able to before, that she was vulnerable and angry. Her body language was screaming and if she was ever a deep-cover operative, singlehandedly he had managed to crack her in half.
Chuck cursed everything, the darkly seductive brunette at his left practically vibrating with her anger and sensuality, the bug in his pocket, Shelton, Sarah for not taking his phone call at face value and tracking him here, here of all places, the worst possible second—
And then the woman, she'd introduced herself as Lana, her bag started ringing, and she flipped one smooth wing of dark hair over one shoulder and answered her phone, her voice going lower, clipped. She slipped off the stool, shooting him the most perfunctory apologetic grin before ducking into the hallway outside the restrooms, and he managed to nod back normally.
When her voice was lower like that, the Intersect had started vibrating in his head. It wasn't true, but that was how it felt, like a hard drive kicking on, taking the enormous silver and ruby ring she wore on her left hand, a birthmark on her neck, the voice—
"Chuck—"
He could actually feel the heat radiating off Sarah's skin, which should've been impossible.
"Her name isn't Lana," he muttered under his breath, keeping his gaze on the hall where she'd disappeared as he angled his body slightly toward Sarah.
"Chuck, Casey and I were assigned to intercept some intel and our timetable is off, we need to find it before midnight, do the words—"
Noche roja, he saw at the top of the file, likely candidate for—
"—noche roja mean anything to you?"
Chuck swung off the barstool without even glancing back, knowing Sarah would follow him. "I can give you a pretty good guess," he sighed, heading for the hallway. "I was probably just trying to pick her up."
--
part 2 (pg-13) . part 3 (nc-17)
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Date: 2009-10-17 11:15 pm (UTC)