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ndnickersontitle: just don't let me down
part: 2/3
fandom: chuck
characters/pairing: chuck/sarah, casey
rating: pg-13
word count: 3387
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.
previously: part 1
"What do you mean, you don't have a gun?"
Chuck glared at her, shifting his weight as they ducked behind a rickety crate. "I'm sorry, you mean the red-handled training-wheels gun they give you at spy school? Yeah, it looks really intimidating. What do you mean, you don't have a gun?"
Sarah mumbled something.
"What?"
"It didn't really go with this dress," she said, just loud enough for him to almost hear, and he snickered.
"You really have gotten soft since I left, haven't you."
She punched him in the shoulder hard enough, she hoped, to leave a bruise, especially when he winced and rubbed it, glaring at her.
Noche roja had taken one look at the two of them and bolted. Sarah didn't know who had been at the other end of the phone line, but they'd obviously tipped her off. After what should've been a gunfight, that left Sarah with one knife, they had trailed her to a deserted office building. A lumbering brute of a guard stood at the front entrance, scowling in their general direction.
Casey was on the way, and he was good with lumbering brute guards.
"Any ideas?"
"Oh, I don't know, a few dozen guns?" Sarah hissed back.
There really was no challenge when she and Casey were working together. He motioned that he would take the back entrance while she stormed through the front, and that was what happened. No surprises. Chuck, on the other hand—
had come out from behind the crate and was walking over to the guard.
Sarah opened her mouth to hiss his name, then bit her lip. They didn't have a gun. But she'd seen what Chuck could do, with her own eyes, even without a gun. As long as no one here was prepared for him.
Nothing in the two years of their uncertain relationship had prepared her for how nerve-racking it was to watch him when he had even the vaguest inkling that he knew what he was doing. But then, he'd been away at Langley (it would never have been a choice, it would always have been her choice, she and Casey had always ever wanted to keep him innocent of all this), he had to be learning something.
How to chat up slutty brunettes who turn out to be enemy agents.
He always goes for the slutty brunettes, doesn't he.
Chuck was making his gait intentionally lazy and uneven, like he was drunk, his aviator sunglasses dangling from his hand. He walked up to the guard and Sarah watched with her heart in her throat as Chuck patted him on the shoulder, laughing loudly at whatever lame joke (she was sure it was a lame joke) he'd just made. Sarah managed to slowly inch around a barrel, keeping her line of sight to Chuck clear, when he brought up his hand so fast she could barely see the glint of gold, did something complicated, and the guard fell over, barely a groan having escaped his thick lips, and Chuck stood over him, an awestruck look on his face.
"Didn't think that would work," he marveled, turning to gaze at his hand, wincing when he saw the livid, bruised skin.
Sarah brought herself to her full height, glaring at him, but her gaze softened as Chuck grinned at her. She heard the scrape of a shoe sole in the alley and pivoted so fast her hair flew, a knife already in her hand, to see Casey walking toward them.
"What'd I miss?"
Sarah dropped her hand to her hip and sighed. "Someone showing off his training," she snipped, stalking toward Chuck, whose grin was fading. "'Didn't think that would work'? Chuck, you're the—"
"I know," he groaned, bending down to root through the unconscious man's pockets for the key. "I'm the idiot. Come on, she's had enough time to get out of here."
They all tended to blur, Sarah realized, once they were inside and making their careful way around the warehouse. Storage cage, decrepit office equipment, thick heavy chains, overhead hooks at the perfect height to hoist a captive off their feet. Water dripping, metal on metal, metal on concrete, the echo of their own breath as Casey cleared another dead end.
The only thing left to do was to take out the other guard at the loading dock, which Sarah and Casey did with more than their usual level of violence, frustrated at the setback. A white delivery van, battered and rusting, stood at the back, but Chuck noticed the mud still damp and clinging to the tires and circled it, looking for clues.
"No signage," Sarah remarked, reassured by the heft of the gun Casey had brought for her. Although it might as well have been a butter knife for all the good it was doing her now.
"The plate's still on it," Chuck called, his brown hair haloed in the sodium lights.
"I better look up the tag," Casey grunted in annoyance, shifting his pack off his shoulders to pull out his laptop.
Chuck looked up from his iPhone, still absently tapping the touch screen. "Don't bother. Didn't you know?" He held the phone up to face them, a record already displayed on the screen. "CIA has an app for that."
--
"Why did you lie to me about where you were going to be tonight?"
The three of them had hopped into Casey's Suburban and were rushing toward the most probable drop-off point. In the backseat, Chuck kept his gaze on his right hand as he wrapped another layer of gauze around his bruised knuckles, instead of meeting Sarah's gaze. "Keep your head in the game, Walker," he heard Casey mutter from the driver's seat, and he glanced up just in time to see Sarah's blue-eyed glare cut from Casey back to him.
"I was embarrassed."
"That's not a good reason for you to go off-grid," Sarah snapped. "Besides, if I hadn't been there, when you flashed on her, what would you have done? Gone after her yourself?"
"I'm here on vacation. I didn't know the government wanted to be even further up my ass—"
"What if you'd been hurt—"
"Hey," Casey barked, taking a left so hard it practically slung Chuck across the seat. "Can we stop discussing the lady feelings long enough to finish this mission? You two can fight it out later."
Sarah's tense silence lasted only thirty seconds. "You know, I don't really care what you do on your own time—"
"Good!" Chuck shot back, angrily defensive. She wasn't supposed to have been there anyway. God, he hated his life sometimes.
"But when you're trying to pick up terrorists—"
"Like I knew she was a terrorist!"
"Like you don't have the Intersect in your head! Come on, Chuck! Aren't you taking this seriously at all? If she'd caught you in a slip, you'd be halfway across the ocean by now, sold to the highest bidder!"
"And two years of running for cover haven't convinced me of that enough already! I know it's dangerous!"
"Then you should've called us for backup!"
"It was just a damn homework assignment, Sarah!" Chuck shouted back, their fight pumping his adrenaline so high that the Intersect was ready to lash out at anything that seemed even vaguely threatening.
And then Casey burst into laughter, swinging into the next lane, almost sideswiping a tiny foreign car.
"Don't tell me they've already got you in seduction school."
Sarah swung around to stare at Chuck so fast her hair flew, the color already high in her cheeks. "At Langley?"
"Yeah, at Langley," Chuck agreed, still angry. "What?"
Sarah shrugged, turning back to face forward, her fist clenching and unclenching on her thigh. "Ours was in Monterrey," she said. "Prep for deep-cover."
"This is short term." Chuck still felt like punching something, but the anger was starting to bleed off.
"That's what you were embarrassed about?"
"Yeah," Chuck replied.
"God. You almost got yourself killed on a homework assignment. Nice work, Langley," Casey said, jerking a shoulder in Sarah's direction.
She shot him a dirty look. "Homework? Does that mean someone's trailing you for the weekend?"
Chuck shook his head. "Probably not. That, or the GL-400 is just a decoy."
Casey guffawed. "No wonder you had performance anxiety."
"Didn't you say something about keeping your head in the game?" Chuck shot back, his fist tightening.
--
Sarah was going to stab Casey to death with one of her ricin-tipped hair-skewers.
"It's not so bad. Just drink a scotch, maybe two, before you get started. Lots of eye contact, but not enough to make you look like a lunatic stalker."
"I hope these aren't Roan Montgomery tips, because Shelton pretty much despises him."
"That's just because Roan came out looking like Wilt Chamberlain. They made a little friendly wager—"
Sarah shook her head, muttering to herself, as they stalked very slowly through the thick foliage outside the Laskey estate. Noche roja would probably be at the pier for the drop, and this was their closest vantage point, with enough cover to keep them alive long enough to get out of there.
Of course, if she obeyed the impulse to stop, turn, and scream "Shut up!" at the top of her lungs, she'd negate all that, but at least then she wouldn't have to hear Casey's seduction tips.
"Did you do deep-cover prep too?"
"Oh yeah. And it was thorough. I could get anything I wanted out of you. Believe me."
Sarah could just imagine Chuck's eyes popping out of his head.
"Not that I'd want to," Casey was quick to add.
"You... no."
"All part of the training, Langley-boy. Shelton's teaching you how to pick up needy women in bars. Deep-cover? Building trust when your mark is already half convinced you're a spy? There's a challenge."
"I'm sorry, I'm still stuck on the mental image of you trying to seduce anything out of me." Chuck audibly shuddered.
"I wouldn't have to. I'd send Walker."
"You both realize this is an open comm line, right?" Sarah hissed into her bracelet.
"Better be," Casey replied.
Sarah reached the treeline first and hesitantly peered between the branches, motioning for quiet, and was relieved when Chuck and Casey stopped talking. The brunette was on her phone, pacing, one hand on her hip, with five henchmen, armed in various degrees, flanking her. When one looked directly at her, Sarah gritted her teeth and kept still until his blank stare moved on. Sudden movements were the best way to get spotted.
"Casey, circle back. Chuck, stay behind me."
"What if I have a better idea?"
--
It should've been a better idea. It would have been. Until Chuck tripped over the tree root and did some amazing mid-fall twist and ended up on his back, laser sight perfectly, randomly trained into the center of the startled henchman's forehead.
The alarm gave the brunette enough time to run, and Casey took off frantically after her. The guide lights of her boat were just visible. If she reached it, it was all over. They wouldn't find her again.
"Get back to the car!"
"Not on your life!"
Sarah shot a fierce glare over her shoulder, but Chuck was unfazed, his long legs eating up her lead as they raced to the beach. One of the men, they were all interchangeable and broad-shouldered and uniformly bad-tempered, came after Casey with fists like knots of hard wood, and Sarah took a second to weigh her options.
Noche roja was clambering onto a rubberized raft, the sides stretching under the stress of her stilettos, when Sarah grabbed her ankle. "Oh no you don't," she hissed, just as Chuck jumped onto the raft, predictably losing the gun in the process, his impeccable slacks wet to the knee and dusted with sand. With a tug the brunette toppled into the shallow surf and came up sputtering, just as the raft bolted from shore, Chuck squeaking with surprise as another henchman took a break from aiming kicks at Casey's head to come over and lasso the raft.
"Great," Sarah hissed, just as a stiletto jabbed straight through the air, in a direct line to her nose.
A busted lip and a bruised rib later, Sarah glanced up. Casey was quipping, which meant he felt confident that he was winning, grunting something about kissing his mother with that mouth. Chuck was flapping and making those little hissing noises that meant the Intersect hadn't quite kicked in yet and he was just doing his best to pretend. It was so odd, to see him when it clicked over, to see Chuck turn into something that wasn't quite Chuck anymore, and sometimes he was able to make it happen, to will it. The brunette's wrist slipped out of Sarah's grip and Sarah swept the leg, almost spraining her other wrist to keep her head from smacking the ground, and when she was able to glance back, Chuck was flipping the henchman over his shoulder. The flailing man did a bellyflop into the shallow water and rolled over, groaning, and Sarah caught a glimpse of Chuck's face in the moonlight.
It made a thrill radiate through her spine to her hips, and she shook herself before delivering a savage punch to the brunette's collarbone. The other woman brought her knee up, and though she was able to avoid the slam of a kneecap, Sarah was brought off-balance and fell to one knee in the sand.
"Sarah!"
The gun had been kicked away. Sarah's hand hooked under the hem of her dress to find her last backup knife, but she felt an elbow in the pit of her stomach and all the breath went out of her in one terrible gust, leaving her eyes brimming with startled tears. She brought her knee back and slammed her heel straight into the brunette's shin, waiting for the give and crack of bone, throwing all her weight into a kick that took her momentum and centered it right into the other woman's stomach.
Chuck was defenseless; Sarah and Casey both knew it. One glance at the surf, through her swimming eyes, her lips parted, was enough to show Sarah that at least Chuck was just puttering in a circle.
Although the spotlight on the boat shifted enough to reveal the silhouette of another raft full of backup henchmen.
Of course.
Headed straight for Chuck.
Sarah turned just in time to catch the glancing blow of a fist, her mouth filling with the coppery salt of her own blood. "Casey!" she howled, putting all her rage into it, her nails scraping the back of the brunette's neck as she forced her face into the sand, just in time for her to let out an shriek and flip onto her back, her hands shooting up to wrap hard around Sarah's neck.
"On it," Casey called back, as Sarah's vision started to blur.
How long since his plane landed? How long? God.
"Just get, down, you bitch," Sarah screamed, driving the heel of her hand into the other woman's jaw, boxing her ears and maneuvering her knees up to drive the woman off her.
And then Casey was half-dragging Chuck to shore, and with one sweep of his arm he brought the gun butt down on the brunette's head, and her hands slipped off Sarah's throat. Sarah coughed her breath back, sand grating into her scalp and her dress sliding up her thigh, and Chuck, sagging and pale, gazing down at her with obvious concern.
"Want a job done right," Casey muttered, bending over and coming back up with Noche roja draped over his other shoulder.
Chuck was the one who offered Sarah a hand up.
--
Sarah let herself into Ellie and Awesome's the next morning, catching a glimpse of herself in the television screen. She self-consciously touched her lip. Usually she made at least a token effort to cover the scratches and scrapes with makeup, but she hadn't felt up to it this morning, not knowing she was going to have to talk to Chuck. Especially on three hours of sleep, since Casey's interrogation sessions had gone long and not very well. Between she'd watched Chuck on the surveillance, his skin green in the night-vision landscape, hardly moving save the occasional snuffle or snore.
Sarah poured her third cup of coffee and sat down on the couch, waiting. Less than thirty seconds later, she heard Chuck stumble out of his room, and soon he was sitting on the other end of the couch, a matching mug of coffee in his own hand.
White undershirt and boxers. She wasn't going to think about what that reminded her of.
"So."
"So," Sarah agreed, wincing a little as she took a long sip of coffee. Her throat still ached a little from being choked. In fact, there wasn't much of her that didn't hurt today.
"Fun night, huh," Chuck began, blowing on the surface of his coffee. "Real break from training, I have to say."
"You just have remarkable good luck."
"Yeah," Chuck laughed, "I have the best luck ever. Morgan only wishes he had this kind of luck. Shipped off to Virginia for the summer! Like summer camp for sociopaths!"
"Sociopaths?"
"What else would you call a homework assignment that involves seducing a total stranger?"
"Uh, normal," Sarah admitted. "It's just that, out of all the women in that bar, you managed to pick the one who, oh, was most likely to murder you."
"I have razor-sharp instincts," Chuck said mock-proudly, tucking one leg under him as he took a sip of his coffee. "What can I say. Like a duck to something that definitely isn't water, that's me."
"Yeah." Sarah finished her coffee and put the empty mug on the table. "Look, in the interests of national security and the fact that I'd like one night out of three hundred that doesn't involve a seventy-five-percent chance of having my hair ripped out or getting a fun new scar, can I just, maybe, suggest that you fail this homework assignment."
"You gonna write me a note, Mom?" Chuck asked, shoving her shoulder lightly as he scooped up her mug and his, taking them back to the kitchen.
Sarah turned around to watch him. "Seriously."
"I should think you'd want me to. With any luck, tonight I'll pick up Osama bin Laden in drag."
Sarah smiled and ducked her head, despite herself. "And you'd take one for the team."
"I, Miss Walker, am an expert at taking one for the team." Chuck brought her another cup of coffee, but her stomach roiled in protest and she shoved it a few inches away. "Although if you have any actual way to get me out of doing this, I would love to hear it."
It was her sleep deprivation talking. It had to be. "Just go out with me tonight."
"Like cover maintenance."
Based on what Casey and General Beckman had been saying, there wasn't going to be any cover maintenance, not anymore, but Sarah didn't have the heart to tell him. Not yet, not when he had that look in his eye. "Right."
"I'm not supposed to..." He didn't meet her eyes. "Seduce someone I know."
Sarah propped her chin on her hand. "Yeah, because your teacher is so going to know," she drawled, batting her lashes at him. "And you actually have to—"
"Oh, no, no," Chuck backpedaled, his brown eyes wide. "No. I'm supposed to get close to someone and find out some piece of intel."
"On tape?"
"Mmm-hmm." Chuck was studying her eyes, her mouth. Sometimes it was just too damn easy. "And Sarah Walker—"
"Won't be the one you pick up at eight tonight," she purred, pushing herself up on her knees and leaning in toward him. His eyes fluttered shut and her heart ached, just a little. "Wear the green shirt with the stripes," she suggested, and when he opened his eyes she was standing, her coffee mug back in her hand.
"So who will be?"
"Katie," Sarah said, with a little smile, a very little smile. "Katie Connell."
--
part 3 (nc-17)
part: 2/3
fandom: chuck
characters/pairing: chuck/sarah, casey
rating: pg-13
word count: 3387
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.
previously: part 1
"What do you mean, you don't have a gun?"
Chuck glared at her, shifting his weight as they ducked behind a rickety crate. "I'm sorry, you mean the red-handled training-wheels gun they give you at spy school? Yeah, it looks really intimidating. What do you mean, you don't have a gun?"
Sarah mumbled something.
"What?"
"It didn't really go with this dress," she said, just loud enough for him to almost hear, and he snickered.
"You really have gotten soft since I left, haven't you."
She punched him in the shoulder hard enough, she hoped, to leave a bruise, especially when he winced and rubbed it, glaring at her.
Noche roja had taken one look at the two of them and bolted. Sarah didn't know who had been at the other end of the phone line, but they'd obviously tipped her off. After what should've been a gunfight, that left Sarah with one knife, they had trailed her to a deserted office building. A lumbering brute of a guard stood at the front entrance, scowling in their general direction.
Casey was on the way, and he was good with lumbering brute guards.
"Any ideas?"
"Oh, I don't know, a few dozen guns?" Sarah hissed back.
There really was no challenge when she and Casey were working together. He motioned that he would take the back entrance while she stormed through the front, and that was what happened. No surprises. Chuck, on the other hand—
had come out from behind the crate and was walking over to the guard.
Sarah opened her mouth to hiss his name, then bit her lip. They didn't have a gun. But she'd seen what Chuck could do, with her own eyes, even without a gun. As long as no one here was prepared for him.
Nothing in the two years of their uncertain relationship had prepared her for how nerve-racking it was to watch him when he had even the vaguest inkling that he knew what he was doing. But then, he'd been away at Langley (it would never have been a choice, it would always have been her choice, she and Casey had always ever wanted to keep him innocent of all this), he had to be learning something.
How to chat up slutty brunettes who turn out to be enemy agents.
He always goes for the slutty brunettes, doesn't he.
Chuck was making his gait intentionally lazy and uneven, like he was drunk, his aviator sunglasses dangling from his hand. He walked up to the guard and Sarah watched with her heart in her throat as Chuck patted him on the shoulder, laughing loudly at whatever lame joke (she was sure it was a lame joke) he'd just made. Sarah managed to slowly inch around a barrel, keeping her line of sight to Chuck clear, when he brought up his hand so fast she could barely see the glint of gold, did something complicated, and the guard fell over, barely a groan having escaped his thick lips, and Chuck stood over him, an awestruck look on his face.
"Didn't think that would work," he marveled, turning to gaze at his hand, wincing when he saw the livid, bruised skin.
Sarah brought herself to her full height, glaring at him, but her gaze softened as Chuck grinned at her. She heard the scrape of a shoe sole in the alley and pivoted so fast her hair flew, a knife already in her hand, to see Casey walking toward them.
"What'd I miss?"
Sarah dropped her hand to her hip and sighed. "Someone showing off his training," she snipped, stalking toward Chuck, whose grin was fading. "'Didn't think that would work'? Chuck, you're the—"
"I know," he groaned, bending down to root through the unconscious man's pockets for the key. "I'm the idiot. Come on, she's had enough time to get out of here."
They all tended to blur, Sarah realized, once they were inside and making their careful way around the warehouse. Storage cage, decrepit office equipment, thick heavy chains, overhead hooks at the perfect height to hoist a captive off their feet. Water dripping, metal on metal, metal on concrete, the echo of their own breath as Casey cleared another dead end.
The only thing left to do was to take out the other guard at the loading dock, which Sarah and Casey did with more than their usual level of violence, frustrated at the setback. A white delivery van, battered and rusting, stood at the back, but Chuck noticed the mud still damp and clinging to the tires and circled it, looking for clues.
"No signage," Sarah remarked, reassured by the heft of the gun Casey had brought for her. Although it might as well have been a butter knife for all the good it was doing her now.
"The plate's still on it," Chuck called, his brown hair haloed in the sodium lights.
"I better look up the tag," Casey grunted in annoyance, shifting his pack off his shoulders to pull out his laptop.
Chuck looked up from his iPhone, still absently tapping the touch screen. "Don't bother. Didn't you know?" He held the phone up to face them, a record already displayed on the screen. "CIA has an app for that."
--
"Why did you lie to me about where you were going to be tonight?"
The three of them had hopped into Casey's Suburban and were rushing toward the most probable drop-off point. In the backseat, Chuck kept his gaze on his right hand as he wrapped another layer of gauze around his bruised knuckles, instead of meeting Sarah's gaze. "Keep your head in the game, Walker," he heard Casey mutter from the driver's seat, and he glanced up just in time to see Sarah's blue-eyed glare cut from Casey back to him.
"I was embarrassed."
"That's not a good reason for you to go off-grid," Sarah snapped. "Besides, if I hadn't been there, when you flashed on her, what would you have done? Gone after her yourself?"
"I'm here on vacation. I didn't know the government wanted to be even further up my ass—"
"What if you'd been hurt—"
"Hey," Casey barked, taking a left so hard it practically slung Chuck across the seat. "Can we stop discussing the lady feelings long enough to finish this mission? You two can fight it out later."
Sarah's tense silence lasted only thirty seconds. "You know, I don't really care what you do on your own time—"
"Good!" Chuck shot back, angrily defensive. She wasn't supposed to have been there anyway. God, he hated his life sometimes.
"But when you're trying to pick up terrorists—"
"Like I knew she was a terrorist!"
"Like you don't have the Intersect in your head! Come on, Chuck! Aren't you taking this seriously at all? If she'd caught you in a slip, you'd be halfway across the ocean by now, sold to the highest bidder!"
"And two years of running for cover haven't convinced me of that enough already! I know it's dangerous!"
"Then you should've called us for backup!"
"It was just a damn homework assignment, Sarah!" Chuck shouted back, their fight pumping his adrenaline so high that the Intersect was ready to lash out at anything that seemed even vaguely threatening.
And then Casey burst into laughter, swinging into the next lane, almost sideswiping a tiny foreign car.
"Don't tell me they've already got you in seduction school."
Sarah swung around to stare at Chuck so fast her hair flew, the color already high in her cheeks. "At Langley?"
"Yeah, at Langley," Chuck agreed, still angry. "What?"
Sarah shrugged, turning back to face forward, her fist clenching and unclenching on her thigh. "Ours was in Monterrey," she said. "Prep for deep-cover."
"This is short term." Chuck still felt like punching something, but the anger was starting to bleed off.
"That's what you were embarrassed about?"
"Yeah," Chuck replied.
"God. You almost got yourself killed on a homework assignment. Nice work, Langley," Casey said, jerking a shoulder in Sarah's direction.
She shot him a dirty look. "Homework? Does that mean someone's trailing you for the weekend?"
Chuck shook his head. "Probably not. That, or the GL-400 is just a decoy."
Casey guffawed. "No wonder you had performance anxiety."
"Didn't you say something about keeping your head in the game?" Chuck shot back, his fist tightening.
--
Sarah was going to stab Casey to death with one of her ricin-tipped hair-skewers.
"It's not so bad. Just drink a scotch, maybe two, before you get started. Lots of eye contact, but not enough to make you look like a lunatic stalker."
"I hope these aren't Roan Montgomery tips, because Shelton pretty much despises him."
"That's just because Roan came out looking like Wilt Chamberlain. They made a little friendly wager—"
Sarah shook her head, muttering to herself, as they stalked very slowly through the thick foliage outside the Laskey estate. Noche roja would probably be at the pier for the drop, and this was their closest vantage point, with enough cover to keep them alive long enough to get out of there.
Of course, if she obeyed the impulse to stop, turn, and scream "Shut up!" at the top of her lungs, she'd negate all that, but at least then she wouldn't have to hear Casey's seduction tips.
"Did you do deep-cover prep too?"
"Oh yeah. And it was thorough. I could get anything I wanted out of you. Believe me."
Sarah could just imagine Chuck's eyes popping out of his head.
"Not that I'd want to," Casey was quick to add.
"You... no."
"All part of the training, Langley-boy. Shelton's teaching you how to pick up needy women in bars. Deep-cover? Building trust when your mark is already half convinced you're a spy? There's a challenge."
"I'm sorry, I'm still stuck on the mental image of you trying to seduce anything out of me." Chuck audibly shuddered.
"I wouldn't have to. I'd send Walker."
"You both realize this is an open comm line, right?" Sarah hissed into her bracelet.
"Better be," Casey replied.
Sarah reached the treeline first and hesitantly peered between the branches, motioning for quiet, and was relieved when Chuck and Casey stopped talking. The brunette was on her phone, pacing, one hand on her hip, with five henchmen, armed in various degrees, flanking her. When one looked directly at her, Sarah gritted her teeth and kept still until his blank stare moved on. Sudden movements were the best way to get spotted.
"Casey, circle back. Chuck, stay behind me."
"What if I have a better idea?"
--
It should've been a better idea. It would have been. Until Chuck tripped over the tree root and did some amazing mid-fall twist and ended up on his back, laser sight perfectly, randomly trained into the center of the startled henchman's forehead.
The alarm gave the brunette enough time to run, and Casey took off frantically after her. The guide lights of her boat were just visible. If she reached it, it was all over. They wouldn't find her again.
"Get back to the car!"
"Not on your life!"
Sarah shot a fierce glare over her shoulder, but Chuck was unfazed, his long legs eating up her lead as they raced to the beach. One of the men, they were all interchangeable and broad-shouldered and uniformly bad-tempered, came after Casey with fists like knots of hard wood, and Sarah took a second to weigh her options.
Noche roja was clambering onto a rubberized raft, the sides stretching under the stress of her stilettos, when Sarah grabbed her ankle. "Oh no you don't," she hissed, just as Chuck jumped onto the raft, predictably losing the gun in the process, his impeccable slacks wet to the knee and dusted with sand. With a tug the brunette toppled into the shallow surf and came up sputtering, just as the raft bolted from shore, Chuck squeaking with surprise as another henchman took a break from aiming kicks at Casey's head to come over and lasso the raft.
"Great," Sarah hissed, just as a stiletto jabbed straight through the air, in a direct line to her nose.
A busted lip and a bruised rib later, Sarah glanced up. Casey was quipping, which meant he felt confident that he was winning, grunting something about kissing his mother with that mouth. Chuck was flapping and making those little hissing noises that meant the Intersect hadn't quite kicked in yet and he was just doing his best to pretend. It was so odd, to see him when it clicked over, to see Chuck turn into something that wasn't quite Chuck anymore, and sometimes he was able to make it happen, to will it. The brunette's wrist slipped out of Sarah's grip and Sarah swept the leg, almost spraining her other wrist to keep her head from smacking the ground, and when she was able to glance back, Chuck was flipping the henchman over his shoulder. The flailing man did a bellyflop into the shallow water and rolled over, groaning, and Sarah caught a glimpse of Chuck's face in the moonlight.
It made a thrill radiate through her spine to her hips, and she shook herself before delivering a savage punch to the brunette's collarbone. The other woman brought her knee up, and though she was able to avoid the slam of a kneecap, Sarah was brought off-balance and fell to one knee in the sand.
"Sarah!"
The gun had been kicked away. Sarah's hand hooked under the hem of her dress to find her last backup knife, but she felt an elbow in the pit of her stomach and all the breath went out of her in one terrible gust, leaving her eyes brimming with startled tears. She brought her knee back and slammed her heel straight into the brunette's shin, waiting for the give and crack of bone, throwing all her weight into a kick that took her momentum and centered it right into the other woman's stomach.
Chuck was defenseless; Sarah and Casey both knew it. One glance at the surf, through her swimming eyes, her lips parted, was enough to show Sarah that at least Chuck was just puttering in a circle.
Although the spotlight on the boat shifted enough to reveal the silhouette of another raft full of backup henchmen.
Of course.
Headed straight for Chuck.
Sarah turned just in time to catch the glancing blow of a fist, her mouth filling with the coppery salt of her own blood. "Casey!" she howled, putting all her rage into it, her nails scraping the back of the brunette's neck as she forced her face into the sand, just in time for her to let out an shriek and flip onto her back, her hands shooting up to wrap hard around Sarah's neck.
"On it," Casey called back, as Sarah's vision started to blur.
How long since his plane landed? How long? God.
"Just get, down, you bitch," Sarah screamed, driving the heel of her hand into the other woman's jaw, boxing her ears and maneuvering her knees up to drive the woman off her.
And then Casey was half-dragging Chuck to shore, and with one sweep of his arm he brought the gun butt down on the brunette's head, and her hands slipped off Sarah's throat. Sarah coughed her breath back, sand grating into her scalp and her dress sliding up her thigh, and Chuck, sagging and pale, gazing down at her with obvious concern.
"Want a job done right," Casey muttered, bending over and coming back up with Noche roja draped over his other shoulder.
Chuck was the one who offered Sarah a hand up.
--
Sarah let herself into Ellie and Awesome's the next morning, catching a glimpse of herself in the television screen. She self-consciously touched her lip. Usually she made at least a token effort to cover the scratches and scrapes with makeup, but she hadn't felt up to it this morning, not knowing she was going to have to talk to Chuck. Especially on three hours of sleep, since Casey's interrogation sessions had gone long and not very well. Between she'd watched Chuck on the surveillance, his skin green in the night-vision landscape, hardly moving save the occasional snuffle or snore.
Sarah poured her third cup of coffee and sat down on the couch, waiting. Less than thirty seconds later, she heard Chuck stumble out of his room, and soon he was sitting on the other end of the couch, a matching mug of coffee in his own hand.
White undershirt and boxers. She wasn't going to think about what that reminded her of.
"So."
"So," Sarah agreed, wincing a little as she took a long sip of coffee. Her throat still ached a little from being choked. In fact, there wasn't much of her that didn't hurt today.
"Fun night, huh," Chuck began, blowing on the surface of his coffee. "Real break from training, I have to say."
"You just have remarkable good luck."
"Yeah," Chuck laughed, "I have the best luck ever. Morgan only wishes he had this kind of luck. Shipped off to Virginia for the summer! Like summer camp for sociopaths!"
"Sociopaths?"
"What else would you call a homework assignment that involves seducing a total stranger?"
"Uh, normal," Sarah admitted. "It's just that, out of all the women in that bar, you managed to pick the one who, oh, was most likely to murder you."
"I have razor-sharp instincts," Chuck said mock-proudly, tucking one leg under him as he took a sip of his coffee. "What can I say. Like a duck to something that definitely isn't water, that's me."
"Yeah." Sarah finished her coffee and put the empty mug on the table. "Look, in the interests of national security and the fact that I'd like one night out of three hundred that doesn't involve a seventy-five-percent chance of having my hair ripped out or getting a fun new scar, can I just, maybe, suggest that you fail this homework assignment."
"You gonna write me a note, Mom?" Chuck asked, shoving her shoulder lightly as he scooped up her mug and his, taking them back to the kitchen.
Sarah turned around to watch him. "Seriously."
"I should think you'd want me to. With any luck, tonight I'll pick up Osama bin Laden in drag."
Sarah smiled and ducked her head, despite herself. "And you'd take one for the team."
"I, Miss Walker, am an expert at taking one for the team." Chuck brought her another cup of coffee, but her stomach roiled in protest and she shoved it a few inches away. "Although if you have any actual way to get me out of doing this, I would love to hear it."
It was her sleep deprivation talking. It had to be. "Just go out with me tonight."
"Like cover maintenance."
Based on what Casey and General Beckman had been saying, there wasn't going to be any cover maintenance, not anymore, but Sarah didn't have the heart to tell him. Not yet, not when he had that look in his eye. "Right."
"I'm not supposed to..." He didn't meet her eyes. "Seduce someone I know."
Sarah propped her chin on her hand. "Yeah, because your teacher is so going to know," she drawled, batting her lashes at him. "And you actually have to—"
"Oh, no, no," Chuck backpedaled, his brown eyes wide. "No. I'm supposed to get close to someone and find out some piece of intel."
"On tape?"
"Mmm-hmm." Chuck was studying her eyes, her mouth. Sometimes it was just too damn easy. "And Sarah Walker—"
"Won't be the one you pick up at eight tonight," she purred, pushing herself up on her knees and leaning in toward him. His eyes fluttered shut and her heart ached, just a little. "Wear the green shirt with the stripes," she suggested, and when he opened his eyes she was standing, her coffee mug back in her hand.
"So who will be?"
"Katie," Sarah said, with a little smile, a very little smile. "Katie Connell."
--
part 3 (nc-17)
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Date: 2009-10-18 11:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-22 09:27 pm (UTC)