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turnonmyheels, two prompts: Nolan Ross and Charles Bartowski lived across the hall from each other at Stanford, combined with Sarah/Chuck/Casey. Note: I’m basically ignoring Chuck S5, because I can; also, Revenge barely appears in here at all. PG-13.
“I don’t like him,” Casey said as he did something gun-related.
“You don’t like anyone,” Chuck pointed out, which got a patented Casey grunt. Trademarked? Chuck wondered. Trademark would be more public, so maybe not. “Nolan was, okay, I am not actually willing to call him a nice guy, that would be a bit of a whitewash, but he was smart and more the laugh-at-you-when-you-did-something-stupid or tell-you-an-outrageous-lie type than the hurt-you-himself type, and for ‘you’ we can substitute ‘me’ because clearly he would neither laugh at nor be able to hurt you specifically.”
Casey’s lip twitched in that also-probably-patented sneer of his.
“Okay,” Chuck reasoned, because a focus on the acceptability of the guy had obviously been wrong from the start, “put it this way: Nolan Ross has advanced technology that can truly benefit the military, which means that you and he should get along.”
“Tell him to stop hitting on me and we might,” Casey said, probably the longest sentence he’d managed in—wait one cotton-picking second!
“Hitting on you?” Chuck squeaked, standing up and somehow slamming his arm painfully against one of the equipment shelves.
Casey didn’t meet his eyes, though that was nothing new. “Yup.”
Chuck had never paid any attention to who Nolan Ross did or didn’t sleep with at school, which had clearly been a mistake since he was trying to sleep with Chuck’s—Chuck’s Casey. So, Casey was obviously already making allowances for Nolan’s military value, otherwise God only knew which parts of him would be in traction (well, there Chuck had a guess about which parts, but that was beside the point). Chuck swallowed. Nolan had never been deterred by people’s reactions to him, and apparently that trait was still in full flower. “I’ll talk to him,” he bravely volunteered. “I mean, you can’t blame a guy for trying.” He remembered, with the force of an Intersect flash, how it had felt to kiss Casey, thinking he was saving Casey’s life.
Fortunately, Casey was still fiddling with his guns. Chuck was really glad that sentence had stayed inside his head, too. “No means no, Bartowski,” Casey said without looking up.
“Well, yes,” Chuck hastened to add. “Definitely no means no, I mean. You can blame him for continued trying, yes, absolutely. I’m on it.”
Only, when he did raise the issue with Nolan, Nolan gave him a careful once-over that had Chuck blushing harder than he had that time with the streaking across campus at midnight. “I don’t see why I should stop,” Nolan said, showing the same reckless disregard for reality that had gotten him into protective custody in the first place. “You’re not using him.” He bit his lower lip and looked up through his bangs. “Congratulations on that, by the way. I didn’t think you could go up in the world from Jill, but Sarah—” he must have seen the flare in Chuck’s eyes, because he finished: “is an incredible combination of skills, grace and beauty.”
“Casey’s straight!” Chuck squawked.
Nolan tilted his head skeptically and put his hands on his narrow hips. “Chuck, believe me when I tell you that I am a connoisseur of military closet cases. I need something to do when I’m negotiating my procurement contracts. John Casey may fuck women, he may even love them on occasion: you’d have more opportunity to evaluate that than I would. But he is not straight, and the reason I know that is the way he looked at me when I put my hand on your shoulder when we were all looking over the intel on those very nasty folks who want to steal NolCorp’s technology.”
Chuck’s mouth did what he was sure was an entirely embarrassing imitation of a fish’s. He was a spy. He was used to surprises. He was Charles Carmichael, international man of mystery, for pete’s sake.
He coughed. “He’s not interested in you, so back off.” The absurdity of Chuck, of all people, intervening to protect Casey’s virtue, of all things, struck him again, and he straightened his shoulders. “It really doesn’t matter who he wants as long as it’s not you.”
Nolan smiled. “There you go! I knew you’d find the right argument eventually.” He sighed theatrically. “All right, I’ll find some other way to amuse myself. But you should really stop torturing the poor boy, you know, shoving his face in how happy you are. It’s just cruel, and I know cruelty.”
Chuck ignored that and calmly left the room, not stumbling or storming at all, totally in control. Preposterous. Absurd. Ridiculous. Absurdulous!
Casey’s mouth, not nearly as hard and unyielding as Chuck had expected. Casey’s arms—Chuck had a shuddery memory of Casey’s hand, right at the center of his back, pushing him down to get away from a hail of gunfire.
Yes, of course Chuck had thoughts. That’s what guys did, after all, when an attractive person was all competent and gorgeous in front of them and when they weren’t at the wrong side of the Kinsey scale. Chuck was a guy, he had thoughts. And occasionally words or actions, but those had never gone well, and there was Sarah, who loved him back. Thoughts didn’t mean anything compared to Sarah’s love. He’d never—
Cruel, Nolan had said.
Well, nuts.
****
“Nolan said this funny thing today,” Chuck tried, his hand on Sarah’s hip, his nose buried in the sweet-smelling hair at the back of her neck. They were snuggled up together, the way Chuck loved, and he was never going to get any safer.
Sarah waited. “What was the funny thing, Chuck?” she asked, tolerantly, after a long pause. Sarah wasn’t going to judge him. They’d been through way too much for her to (leave him) get mad at him over the truth.
“He, uh. He might’ve hinted, or might’ve said outright, that, under certain circumstances, he thinks, maybe, that Casey has the hots for me.” The last six words came out in a rush, not quite mumbled.
Sarah took a deep breath and folded her fingers around his own, pulling his hand down to rest against her stomach. Her body tensed a little, but nothing like ‘jealous rage’ or ‘mockery.’ “He said that, and you must have believed him, or you wouldn’t be bringing it up with me.”
Chuck gulped. “Nolan—he’s not a pleasant guy, but no one ever said he wasn’t a keen observer of the human condition.” And Chuck had definitely wondered what kept Casey around, given his expressed distaste for the sentimentality that was Chuck (and very occasionally Sarah) and his other opportunities for mayhem if he’d left them.
“And how does that make you feel?” Sarah prompted.
This was the worst question, bottom of the barrel, and Chuck had spent most of the afternoon on it without a good answer. But he’d trusted Sarah this far. “I love you,” he said. “I wake up every day amazed that I get to have you in my life. I have a hard time even imagining how I would get by without you.” He took a deep breath. “But, the thought that Casey might want that, if things were different—it doesn’t disgust me.”
He felt her nod against him. She squeezed his hand, and he was almost overwhelmed with relief. Which dissipated almost immediately when she spoke again. “He and I had a conversation about it, when you and I got back together.”
“What?” Chuck yelped, but she just kept talking.
“Insofar as Casey talks, which is, well, you know. I asked if it was going to be a problem for him, and he stonewalled, and I said that the two of us had a lot in common since we both loved you. He said ‘three’s a crowd,’ and I said it didn’t have to be. And then,” now she was drawing in on herself, as if preparing for a fight, “he asked if I’d feel the same way in your bed. He was trying to get a rise out of me, so he didn’t really know what to do when I said yes.”
“Buh?” Chuck managed, because that did seem to call for a follow-up.
She turned her head further into the pillow but didn’t move away from him. “I’ll admit, if it was another woman—or anyone else, really. But it’s Casey.” She put everything into his name: years of saving each other and relying on each other to be saved, hard-won trust and slowly given faith. He’d trust Casey with Sarah’s life, or Ellie’s.
Chuck nodded and kissed her shoulder.
“I didn’t tell you because—I was scared. We were just learning each other again, and it was already so complicated, and then I thought he might leave anyway. But he didn’t, and now you know.”
“Now I know,” Chuck repeated. Somehow his hand had wandered lower, not really touching her stomach any more. Sarah rolled against him—God, those were literally killer thighs she had—and he groaned.
Somewhat later, sweaty and mussed, Chuck lay on his belly, Sarah’s leg slung comfortably over his as he called. Sarah had put the phone in his hand without saying a word. “Hey, Casey!” he said brightly, as if it weren’t the middle of the night. “Do you have a couple of minutes to come over here? We need to talk.”
****
Superspies? Also super-athletic in bed, as it turned out, and double had been more like squared where they were concerned, so if Chuck was a little bit wobbly the next day he had every reason to be. Fortunately the bad guys targeting NolCorp made an entirely predictable move that very day and were easily wrapped up, which meant that Nolan was out of their hair.
“Hey,” Chuck said as Nolan finished packing up his laptop. Nolan looked up, expectant. “I just wanted to say, uh, thanks. For, you know, the stuff about Casey. It explained a lot,” because Chuck paid his debts, but he didn’t need to provide any details.
Nolan stared at him, then burst into delighted laughter.
“What?” Chuck snapped.
Nolan shook his head, setting his ridiculous bangs swinging. “Chuck, I made that up. Your friend is a professional. He spent the entire time around me with laser-like focus on his mission objectives, very much like someone else I know. I was just messing with you. Aren’t spies supposed to be wise in the ways of deception?”
Chuck let his first couple of responses to that die in his throat. “Oh. Right,” he said when he regained speech. There was a bite mark on his shoulder, under his shirt, throbbing distractingly. “Well, okay then. Good luck with the new database, and please try not to become the target of another international conspiracy any time soon.”
Nolan waved goodbye, a motion that involved fluttering his fingers instead of moving his whole hand like a non-annoying person, and he was already talking into his phone, telling someone not to do anything until he got back and to remember what happened last time. He sounded genuinely concerned, and Chuck spared a moment to worry about the well-being of anyone for whom Nolan Ross had genuine concern.
Then he put it out of his mind. Nolan might be a trickster, but Chuck was going home to the hottest, deadliest, most amazing people he’d ever met. He doubted Nolan’s millions would give him the same welcome. So Nolan could have his little games; Chuck had his happily ever after.
turnonmyheels, two prompts: Nolan Ross and Charles Bartowski lived across the hall from each other at Stanford, combined with Sarah/Chuck/Casey. Note: I’m basically ignoring Chuck S5, because I can; also, Revenge barely appears in here at all. PG-13.“I don’t like him,” Casey said as he did something gun-related.
“You don’t like anyone,” Chuck pointed out, which got a patented Casey grunt. Trademarked? Chuck wondered. Trademark would be more public, so maybe not. “Nolan was, okay, I am not actually willing to call him a nice guy, that would be a bit of a whitewash, but he was smart and more the laugh-at-you-when-you-did-something-stupid or tell-you-an-outrageous-lie type than the hurt-you-himself type, and for ‘you’ we can substitute ‘me’ because clearly he would neither laugh at nor be able to hurt you specifically.”
Casey’s lip twitched in that also-probably-patented sneer of his.
“Okay,” Chuck reasoned, because a focus on the acceptability of the guy had obviously been wrong from the start, “put it this way: Nolan Ross has advanced technology that can truly benefit the military, which means that you and he should get along.”
“Tell him to stop hitting on me and we might,” Casey said, probably the longest sentence he’d managed in—wait one cotton-picking second!
“Hitting on you?” Chuck squeaked, standing up and somehow slamming his arm painfully against one of the equipment shelves.
Casey didn’t meet his eyes, though that was nothing new. “Yup.”
Chuck had never paid any attention to who Nolan Ross did or didn’t sleep with at school, which had clearly been a mistake since he was trying to sleep with Chuck’s—Chuck’s Casey. So, Casey was obviously already making allowances for Nolan’s military value, otherwise God only knew which parts of him would be in traction (well, there Chuck had a guess about which parts, but that was beside the point). Chuck swallowed. Nolan had never been deterred by people’s reactions to him, and apparently that trait was still in full flower. “I’ll talk to him,” he bravely volunteered. “I mean, you can’t blame a guy for trying.” He remembered, with the force of an Intersect flash, how it had felt to kiss Casey, thinking he was saving Casey’s life.
Fortunately, Casey was still fiddling with his guns. Chuck was really glad that sentence had stayed inside his head, too. “No means no, Bartowski,” Casey said without looking up.
“Well, yes,” Chuck hastened to add. “Definitely no means no, I mean. You can blame him for continued trying, yes, absolutely. I’m on it.”
Only, when he did raise the issue with Nolan, Nolan gave him a careful once-over that had Chuck blushing harder than he had that time with the streaking across campus at midnight. “I don’t see why I should stop,” Nolan said, showing the same reckless disregard for reality that had gotten him into protective custody in the first place. “You’re not using him.” He bit his lower lip and looked up through his bangs. “Congratulations on that, by the way. I didn’t think you could go up in the world from Jill, but Sarah—” he must have seen the flare in Chuck’s eyes, because he finished: “is an incredible combination of skills, grace and beauty.”
“Casey’s straight!” Chuck squawked.
Nolan tilted his head skeptically and put his hands on his narrow hips. “Chuck, believe me when I tell you that I am a connoisseur of military closet cases. I need something to do when I’m negotiating my procurement contracts. John Casey may fuck women, he may even love them on occasion: you’d have more opportunity to evaluate that than I would. But he is not straight, and the reason I know that is the way he looked at me when I put my hand on your shoulder when we were all looking over the intel on those very nasty folks who want to steal NolCorp’s technology.”
Chuck’s mouth did what he was sure was an entirely embarrassing imitation of a fish’s. He was a spy. He was used to surprises. He was Charles Carmichael, international man of mystery, for pete’s sake.
He coughed. “He’s not interested in you, so back off.” The absurdity of Chuck, of all people, intervening to protect Casey’s virtue, of all things, struck him again, and he straightened his shoulders. “It really doesn’t matter who he wants as long as it’s not you.”
Nolan smiled. “There you go! I knew you’d find the right argument eventually.” He sighed theatrically. “All right, I’ll find some other way to amuse myself. But you should really stop torturing the poor boy, you know, shoving his face in how happy you are. It’s just cruel, and I know cruelty.”
Chuck ignored that and calmly left the room, not stumbling or storming at all, totally in control. Preposterous. Absurd. Ridiculous. Absurdulous!
Casey’s mouth, not nearly as hard and unyielding as Chuck had expected. Casey’s arms—Chuck had a shuddery memory of Casey’s hand, right at the center of his back, pushing him down to get away from a hail of gunfire.
Yes, of course Chuck had thoughts. That’s what guys did, after all, when an attractive person was all competent and gorgeous in front of them and when they weren’t at the wrong side of the Kinsey scale. Chuck was a guy, he had thoughts. And occasionally words or actions, but those had never gone well, and there was Sarah, who loved him back. Thoughts didn’t mean anything compared to Sarah’s love. He’d never—
Cruel, Nolan had said.
Well, nuts.
****
“Nolan said this funny thing today,” Chuck tried, his hand on Sarah’s hip, his nose buried in the sweet-smelling hair at the back of her neck. They were snuggled up together, the way Chuck loved, and he was never going to get any safer.
Sarah waited. “What was the funny thing, Chuck?” she asked, tolerantly, after a long pause. Sarah wasn’t going to judge him. They’d been through way too much for her to (leave him) get mad at him over the truth.
“He, uh. He might’ve hinted, or might’ve said outright, that, under certain circumstances, he thinks, maybe, that Casey has the hots for me.” The last six words came out in a rush, not quite mumbled.
Sarah took a deep breath and folded her fingers around his own, pulling his hand down to rest against her stomach. Her body tensed a little, but nothing like ‘jealous rage’ or ‘mockery.’ “He said that, and you must have believed him, or you wouldn’t be bringing it up with me.”
Chuck gulped. “Nolan—he’s not a pleasant guy, but no one ever said he wasn’t a keen observer of the human condition.” And Chuck had definitely wondered what kept Casey around, given his expressed distaste for the sentimentality that was Chuck (and very occasionally Sarah) and his other opportunities for mayhem if he’d left them.
“And how does that make you feel?” Sarah prompted.
This was the worst question, bottom of the barrel, and Chuck had spent most of the afternoon on it without a good answer. But he’d trusted Sarah this far. “I love you,” he said. “I wake up every day amazed that I get to have you in my life. I have a hard time even imagining how I would get by without you.” He took a deep breath. “But, the thought that Casey might want that, if things were different—it doesn’t disgust me.”
He felt her nod against him. She squeezed his hand, and he was almost overwhelmed with relief. Which dissipated almost immediately when she spoke again. “He and I had a conversation about it, when you and I got back together.”
“What?” Chuck yelped, but she just kept talking.
“Insofar as Casey talks, which is, well, you know. I asked if it was going to be a problem for him, and he stonewalled, and I said that the two of us had a lot in common since we both loved you. He said ‘three’s a crowd,’ and I said it didn’t have to be. And then,” now she was drawing in on herself, as if preparing for a fight, “he asked if I’d feel the same way in your bed. He was trying to get a rise out of me, so he didn’t really know what to do when I said yes.”
“Buh?” Chuck managed, because that did seem to call for a follow-up.
She turned her head further into the pillow but didn’t move away from him. “I’ll admit, if it was another woman—or anyone else, really. But it’s Casey.” She put everything into his name: years of saving each other and relying on each other to be saved, hard-won trust and slowly given faith. He’d trust Casey with Sarah’s life, or Ellie’s.
Chuck nodded and kissed her shoulder.
“I didn’t tell you because—I was scared. We were just learning each other again, and it was already so complicated, and then I thought he might leave anyway. But he didn’t, and now you know.”
“Now I know,” Chuck repeated. Somehow his hand had wandered lower, not really touching her stomach any more. Sarah rolled against him—God, those were literally killer thighs she had—and he groaned.
Somewhat later, sweaty and mussed, Chuck lay on his belly, Sarah’s leg slung comfortably over his as he called. Sarah had put the phone in his hand without saying a word. “Hey, Casey!” he said brightly, as if it weren’t the middle of the night. “Do you have a couple of minutes to come over here? We need to talk.”
****
Superspies? Also super-athletic in bed, as it turned out, and double had been more like squared where they were concerned, so if Chuck was a little bit wobbly the next day he had every reason to be. Fortunately the bad guys targeting NolCorp made an entirely predictable move that very day and were easily wrapped up, which meant that Nolan was out of their hair.
“Hey,” Chuck said as Nolan finished packing up his laptop. Nolan looked up, expectant. “I just wanted to say, uh, thanks. For, you know, the stuff about Casey. It explained a lot,” because Chuck paid his debts, but he didn’t need to provide any details.
Nolan stared at him, then burst into delighted laughter.
“What?” Chuck snapped.
Nolan shook his head, setting his ridiculous bangs swinging. “Chuck, I made that up. Your friend is a professional. He spent the entire time around me with laser-like focus on his mission objectives, very much like someone else I know. I was just messing with you. Aren’t spies supposed to be wise in the ways of deception?”
Chuck let his first couple of responses to that die in his throat. “Oh. Right,” he said when he regained speech. There was a bite mark on his shoulder, under his shirt, throbbing distractingly. “Well, okay then. Good luck with the new database, and please try not to become the target of another international conspiracy any time soon.”
Nolan waved goodbye, a motion that involved fluttering his fingers instead of moving his whole hand like a non-annoying person, and he was already talking into his phone, telling someone not to do anything until he got back and to remember what happened last time. He sounded genuinely concerned, and Chuck spared a moment to worry about the well-being of anyone for whom Nolan Ross had genuine concern.
Then he put it out of his mind. Nolan might be a trickster, but Chuck was going home to the hottest, deadliest, most amazing people he’d ever met. He doubted Nolan’s millions would give him the same welcome. So Nolan could have his little games; Chuck had his happily ever after.
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