Tempted Ch 11 - Stunned
Here's the next chapter! If all goes as outlined, there should be two chapters left after this, and then we're done!
Disclaimer: these are not my characters, because as you can see, I would do different things with them than the show has done ...
Bartowski was standing in the middle of a Buy More aisle staring down at his phone with a disturbed expression. Ordinarily Casey wouldn’t have bothered himself about Chuck’s emotional disturbances - he tended to have a lot of them - but since the team was on high alert for the Fulcrum agent or agents who seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth after surfacing on their way to Burbank, he figured anything that put that expression on the Intersect’s face was his business. So as he neared him Casey reached out and grabbed the phone from Chuck’s hands.
“Hey!” flash-boy squawked, reaching futilely for the phone. Casey stiff-armed him away with ease while he read the text on the screen. I’m taking today and the weekend off to get my head sorted out. Won’t be home till Monday. Please don’t wreck the house. From Ellie.
Get her head sorted out? “You and Woodcomb gonna be bachelors for a few days, huh?” That couldn’t be what was causing Bartowski’s upset.
“Ah - not exactly.” Chuck grabbed for the phone again and Casey let him have it this time. The younger man put it away, frowning. “You haven’t reviewed any of the surveillance recordings from the last few days, huh?”
“Walker did,” Casey snapped, annoyed at the implication that he might not be doing his job. He’d turned all interior surveillance of the Bartowski residence over to his partner. It was just ... better, that way. And she hadn’t informed him of any occurrences that would give Ellie the need to get her head ‘sorted out’.
“And you haven’t talked to her?”
“Of course not. Why would I talk to Ellie?” Had he looked guilty there, for a second? Did Chuck suspect something?
Chuck eyed him strangely. “I meant Sarah, Casey.”
Shit. “Oh. Yeah, regular sit reps.” Casey folded his arms firmly, to distract Chuck and because now he was onto a scent. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“Uh ... well.” Chuck mussed his own hair. “Devon moved out last week.”
Moved out. Casey blinked slowly. “What do you mean, ‘moved out’?” There was no ‘moving out’ in his conceptual universe. Devon was a fixture. An ugly, pointless one, but screwed in tightly exactly where he wasn’t wanted. Not even after Casey and Ellie had completely lost control at the fountain that day had she owned up and come clean, and he figured if that didn’t do it nothing would. So ... what? “Moved out as in ... moved out?”
Chuck nodded dismally. “Yeah. No taking some time to think, no needing some space for a little while - they’re done, I guess. Short of some miracle.”
Casey hadn’t seen Devon around over the past week, but he’d seen the man drive away with his snowboard and some luggage and figured he was headed off somewhere to play. Hearing that he and Ellie were done, caput, Casey was ... he didn’t have an appropriate word for what he was. In shock. Flabbergasted, there was a good term. Vindicated, somehow, and ... well, not scared. What did he have to be afraid of? He was just a little befuddled, that was all.
“Why?” he barked out. “What happened?”
Chuck blinked and tilted his head suspiciously, but Casey barely noticed through the intensity of his drive for information.
“She didn’t really say,” Chuck told the older man in measured tones, “and I don’t think it’s any of your business.” He folded his arms as if to indicate that his lips were now Fort Knox.
Casey sneered at him. He was recalling that there was a reason completely unrelated to Ellie for which he’d originally sought Chuck out. But at that moment Walker entered the store, eyes gathering Casey and Chuck and efficiently herding them toward the Castle.
“Uh-oh”, Casey heard from Chuck. He didn’t bother with such meaninglessness himself as they clumped down into the Castle, staggered one by one to avoid rousing the suspicions of Buy More’s employees. Though most of them were so dimwitted that Casey wondered, not for the first time, if they even needed to bother.
General Beckman was on the screen. “Agent Walker informs me that Fulcrum has possibly surfaced in Burbank. From our end, it appears that Chuck is definitely their target.”
As if anything else in Burbank could possibly qualify as an alternative target, Casey thought sardonically.
“What?” Chuck squawked, betraying the fact that this was news to him. It had been Casey’s assignment to inform him in the few minutes’ warning the two agents had gotten before the briefing with the General. He sensed Walker sliding him a sideways glance, one that asked why that hadn’t happened. Casey scowled. Filling Chuck in was what he’d been on his way to do. Ellie’s text had distracted him.
It wasn’t good that Ellie was disrupting his attention to the job. Not good at all. And he realized with disgust that it was happening right now; he’d missed something.
“ . . . out of town,” Walker was saying. “Good timing for a trap.”
Trap? That effectively snapped Casey’s brain to the current situation.
“I don’t think ..” Chuck began, but was over-ridden by General Beckman.
“If we have certainty that your sister is out of the way for the entire weekend, you have a go.” She signed off abruptly.
Ellie out of town for the weekend was a good thing, Casey told himself. He could put her out of his mind and concentrate on his duty. The fact that this took effort scared him - just a little. But now wasn’t the time to be occupied with anything but the mission, including his discomfort over the feelings a woman was stirring in his gut.
With General Beckman off the screen Walker and Casey set to planning their trap. Walker would move into the Bartowski home for the weekend. Casey would too, but not as obviously - to all intents and purposes he’d still be across the courtyard in his own home. The timing of this was good for more than just a trap, he decided. Some action to pull his priorities together - that’s what he needed.
The next day, though, camped out on the floor in what had been Ellie’s and Devon’s room, he was feeling differently about this plan. No action had happened, yet. And no, Ellie wasn’t here, but all her stuff was. He lay on the floor staring up at the shade-darkened ceiling with patches of sunlight dancing across it, shoving away thoughts of Ellie and Devon together in the nearby bed. The room smelled like her. A drawer had been partially open when he’d entered, and something frilly was sticking out. It still as, because the goal was to leave everything in here undisturbed. Ellie could never know he’d spent any time - let alone what would potentially be two days - on her bedroom floor. So there it stayed, something pink and dainty, reminding him of his thoughts on her underwear months ago; he’d wondered if she had anything more feminine than the basic white he’d seen her in. Well, that question was answered. A dozen others were roaming his brain, though. He took the chance to curse Chuck for his refusal to let anyone but himself and Walker sleep on his sheets; otherwise Casey could have caught his sleep shift in Chuck’s room and avoided this torture.
When he finally rose and prepared for spending the night on guard duty, his lack of sleep made Casey unsuitable for human interaction. Sarah had had the day shift, as it made sense that the girlfriend would hang out in Ellie’s absence. She and Chuck would sleep in his room, still playing the loving couple, while Casey staked out the rest of the house. The two young people made an early night of it, a move spurred by Casey’s unvarnished surliness.
That was fine with Casey. He thought if he had to listen to Chuck’s yammering at all he might just put a bullet in the wrong person.
So Chuck and Sarah went to bed, early if not quite early enough for Casey, and blessed silence descended on the house. Casey moved about in the dark, checking the sensors he and Walker had placed at all the possible entrances and the silent alarm that would vibrate against his wrist and Sarah’s if anyone breached them. Then he set up for a long night of being on watch.
The hours crept by. As trained as he was, Casey usually spent times like this hoping something would happen, anything to break up the long periods of alert readiness. Tonight that was fueled by an additional desire to take his frustration, lack of sleep, and uncertainty out on an appropriate target - a villain. Any villain would do.
As the night wore on, though, it seemed he wasn’t going to get his desire. Midnight passed, and two a.m. Then five a.m. Morning light was considering creeping over from the east when Casey’s head swung around and his posture stilled. He hadn’t heard anything, exactly, and his alarm was quiescent against his arm. But there was something ... he rose from where he’d been squatting against a hallway wall, then paused to get a better sense of things.
There was a sound, from down near Chuck’s bedroom. Casey knew those two weren’t up and about yet. Adrenaline beginning to pump, he moved silently and swiftly to the bedroom door. It was ajar. Gun out and safety off, he nudged it open. It swung silently on hinges that he’d oiled the day before. Chuck’s bed came into view with two lumps in it, both of them breathing. Pushing the door further, Casey entered the room in a low crouch, automatically checking the area behind the door - and then catching a glimpse of movement at the window.
Casey dropped to the floor by the bed as a dark figure, difficult to visualize in the pre-dawn gloom, pried at Chuck’s window. It began to slide open. The alarm at Casey’s wrist didn’t react. Damn, the intruder had disabled it somehow; which meant he or she knew to expect security and agents here. Not good. He risked shoving his shoulder against the bed to jar it and awaken Walker.
There was the barest rustle, and then silence. She’d have her gun in her hand, then. Despite her lamentable tendency toward emotional entanglements, when it came down to an acute situation, Walker was good at what she did. Casey had no fears there.
The intruder had gotten the window open and was almost into the room. Casey had been inching toward the end of the bed when the alarm at his wrist began - finally -to vibrate. He stopped, and his lip curled up in pleased disdain. They may have disabled the entry-way sensors, but obviously they hadn’t gotten to the interior ones he and Walker had spent the previous evening setting up, like those criss-crossing the kitchen floor.
The man - in the slowly strengthening light, gender could now be identified - was halfway to the bed when Walker exploded up off it, kicking the blanket out of the way with expertise and leaping at the man with a flying tackle. Chuck awoke with a squawk and Casey didn’t stay to see more.
Darting out of the room, he headed to the kitchen. Another black-clad figure stood in the doorway raising a communication device to his mouth. He saw Casey and his hand reversed direction, toward the gun he wore in a side holster; but Casey’s was already out, and trained.
“Don’t,” he snarled, half-wishing he would - but common sense prevailed in the other’s head and he froze obediently, hands in the air. Casey lifted the gun out of its holster himself, and gestured the man to turn around. He reached for his handcuffs, shifting with his prisoner to keep him in gun sight. Just as Casey moved his weight to his right foot, a heavy blow meant for his head glanced instead off his left shoulder. The arm smarted with pain and then went numb, but he didn’t have time to consider that as he swung around with his gun now held to bludgeon. The grip connected with the temple of yet another man in dark clothing standing behind him. Casey registered instantaneously that the guy was going down, his eyes rolled up, and so he continued around to end his three-sixty turn once more facing the first man.
He was no longer there. Casey was peripherally aware of Walker, with Bartowski behind her, exiting the bedroom; but his attention was on Man #1 who was postured to deliver a roundhouse kick to Casey’s head. He ducked it and felt his gun knocked from his hand by a hard Fulcrum fist. That just left that hand free, though, to clip a fast right uppercut into the guys’ gut. His left arm was useless, so he followed up with a low-driving shoulder into the man’s chest and a head-but up under his chin. The Fulcrum agent got in a good punch to Casey’s jaw, but then he went down, and Casey fell on him to keep him there; the man fought his captor’s weight, twisting and clawing his arm out to find the gun that had fallen to the floor.
“Chuck!” Casey bellowed, because Walker was on the floor, too, subduing the man Casey had felled first, who had started to stir. “A little help here?”
“What? What!” Chuck appeared at his side, verbally dithering but looking ready to stomp on the guy’s head if need be.
“Handcuffs,” Casey barked out while maneuvering to corral the leg that was trying to knee him in the gonads, “my left arm’s dead.”
Chuck found the cuffs, got them on the guy who continued to struggle under Casey’s restraint, and then he backed off to Sarah’s side. Walker had produced rope from somewhere and was tightly binding the man Casey had cold-cocked.
“The other one contained?” Casey asked. She nodded.
“Handcuffed to the bed,” Chuck offered. He raised a hand to rub his shoulder as though it hurt, and Casey noted that Bartowski’s knuckles were abraded. So once more the Intersect had been an active player in the team’s reaction to a threat. He’d remember to put that in his report.
He grabbed the gun he’d dropped while scuffling with the agent who now wore his handcuffs. He trained it on him, because the idiot was snaking his body slowly across the floor in the direction of the living room door, as though none of them were going to notice if he got to it.
That was when said door opened, early morning light spilled across the floor, and Eleanor Bartowski walked into their midst.