Tempted Ch 16
OK, it's finished! Here's the last chapter of Tempted, my John/Ellie marathon fic. Standard disclaimers still apply.
Also: don't shoot me, but one of my quarrels with the show, plot-wise, is that so many people who know the truth or a part of the truth are being allowed to run around loose. Don't you think they'd have been quietly disappeared with a nice cover story about moving to New Brunswick, CA? But it's canon that they're still in the real world, and Chuck was the one to talk the authorities into that state of affairs. So I've used that plot device here. It seems a little cheap but I hope no one minds too much!
Bold
Sarah’s eyes were huge. She was biting her lips, and her gaze slid between the spectacle in the cell - her partner John Casey, wrapped amorously around an asset’s sister - and said asset, Chuck. With her hand on Chuck’s shoulder, the blonde was murmuring “it’s OK, it’s OK” over and over in a distinctly worried tone.
Chuck’s eyes weren’t visible, because he’d clamped a forearm across them. Behind it, his head shook back and forth. “No it isn’t!” he burst out. “I don’t know what it ... it ... that is, but it’s definitely NOT OK!”
Ellie was able to sense in her own chest the growl that rumbled through John. Despite the quivery feelings it gave her, she pushed against his torso. He slowly turned her loose, while glaring over her head at her brother. If Chuck had been looking, Ellie was certain he would have been truly intimidated. For her part, it was just endearing. She brushed her hand along John’s shoulder caressingly, thrilled to be able to do so, and thrilled even more that it seemed to settle him a bit.
Sarah formed her features into a pointedly bland expression, and took a step to unlock the cell door. Sensing her movement, Chuck grasped one-handed at her, still keeping his eyes covered. “No,” he blurted, “don’t let them out. Don’t let them out until they promise to never, ever, do that again.”
Sarah smiled at the absurdity of this. “Chuck,” she reasoned placatingly, “we can’t keep them in there until they promise to behave. They’re not small children.”
“Maybe not,” he asserted, “but they’ve been very, very, very” - his hand was batting at the air in between the ‘very’s, as though out of its thinness he could procure words strong enough to adequately portray his emotions, “very, very, bad.”
Sarah chuckled, patted his arm consolingly, and unlocked the cell door while he took his arm from over his face to glare at her. “Chuck talked the General out of relocating you,” she said to Ellie, apparently deciding to forego the knottier issue of kissing to deal with the comparatively simpler one of national security.
“He did?” John’s voice, from behind Ellie, sounded surprised. She edged a little hesitantly out into the larger room, and he followed her. Standing facing the other two, Ellie felt reality rushing at her and with it questions. Chief among them were, what does this mean? and now what? Both applied to more than one situation of import.
Chuck eyed the two of them through slitted lids. “I think it may be awhile before my eyesight returns,” he said conversationally to no one in particular. Ellie frowned in his direction but spoke to Sarah.
“What does that mean? I can keep my home? My job? My, my life?”
“For the foreseeable future, yes.” Sarah’s focus moved over Ellie’s shoulder, to her partner’s face. From behind her where Sarah couldn’t see, Ellie felt John touch the small of her back with his knuckles and sweep his fingers slowly up and down. An undercover caress, conveying both comfort and congratulations. It was unexpected, sweet enough to choke her up.
“Of course,” Sarah continued with an arched brow, “this means we’re even more entrenched here, since bringing in new agents for anything long-term might increase a civilian’s” - she tipped her head at Ellie, who realized belatedly that in this scenario she was the civilian - “knowledge of our personnel and the mission. Which could increase the danger quotient for everyone involved.” Though the agent had been addressing them all, Ellie knew her words up to that point were for the benefit of the civilian, the only person present who wouldn’t already know the reasoning behind these precautions. Now, though, Sarah focused in on John. “Our duties expand, to protection of Ellie. It doesn’t look like that’ll bother you, much ...” she let her voice trail off suggestively. Ellie blushed. Behind her, John grunted - not an affirmation, and not a denial.
His hand was still on her back, though, and so her abdominal muscles were all tight and quivering. Was she ever going to get over this reaction to him?
“Chuck,” she said, trying to think about other things, rather more important things. “I don’t know how you did that, or, or ... I don’t know. But thank you.” She stepped forward - regrettably, away from John - to give her brother a fierce hug. “Thank you,” she whispered again into his ear.
He held her closely and just as fiercely. “Hey, it was for me too. I won’t do this without you. I want you safe, I want all of us safe, but” - he backed away, to stare at her. “You have to understand, this is only for as long as the situation is status quo. Anything changes, the deal changes. It’s all really very up in the air. And it means a lot of surveillance. You’ll see lots more of Sarah and” - his face twisted momentarily- “Casey. There’ll be eyes on you at work, probably, and other stuff. And you can’t know details. What you know now, that’s it. Nothing more.” He searched her face worriedly. “Is that ... can you deal with that?”
Ellie took a deep breath, trying to take in what he was saying to her, and trying to be as brutally honest with him as he had just been with her. “I probably can’t understand well enough yet to know what it is you’re asking me to deal with. But if I can stay here, keep my life - if those are the conditions, so be it. I’ll take it for as long as I can get it. And thank you for it every day, if need be.”
“No, no need,” he returned hastily. His neck was red in that way he had when he got embarrassed. Ellie was cheered by this sign that in some ways he was still her awkward, endearing little brother. “But,” he continued in a more aggressive tone, “how about instead of saying ‘thanks’ every day, you just agree to never do ... that” - he waved vaguely toward the cell she and John had recently exited, as though even looking that direction again was too traumatic - “with him. Ever. For as long as we both shall live.” He frowned fiercely at her, ignoring her rolled eyes. “PROMISE me, Ellie.” He waited expectantly.
Ellie’s fists found her hips as her gratitude toward Chuck swiftly waned. He was putting her in an unfeasible situation. There was no possible response she could make to his foolishness that wouldn’t be either a lie, obvious and weak hedging, or an open declaration that she absolutely wanted to do that again. With no one else but John. Over and over again.
It was maybe time for such a declaration, but she didn’t want to make it in front of her brother and Sarah and who knew how many surveillance cameras.
Oh, gods, surveillance cameras. Ellie was suddenly the one turning red as she remembered what she’d recently been up to in front of them. Would that General person see -
A hard muscled arm suddenly slid firmly around her waist, startling her. John stood just behind her, curving his knuckles territorially over her hip. The mortified flow Ellie’s thoughts had been following halted abruptly in a heated puddle. She let him step up against her body, delighting in the solid feel of him at her back. Chuck’s eyes narrowed and he opened his mouth to decry this action, but he was forestalled.
“Nice job with the General,” John said over Ellie’s head. There was warning in his tone. “Probably want to quit while you’re ahead.” His other, good arm came across her chest to hold her shoulder. It was all very alpha male and proprietary; he was staking a claim. That spilled a thrill through to Ellie’s heart even as she frowned; she had a vague sense that as a strong, independent woman she wasn’t supposed to allow claim-staking. But he felt so good, there against her spine and surrounding her ... and then he spoke again and alleviated any need for objection.
“Anything else,” he said with a quick constriction of his good arm that squeezed away her breath, while heating her loins, “is up to Ellie.” He dropped both his arms and let her go, every bit as suddenly as he’d encompassed her.
Ellie wanted him back. Up to Ellie. What lovely, lovely words ...
He’d turned away and was talking to Sarah, all business. Well, almost. Ellie took a few seconds to try to glare her brother into submission, because he was still vocally protesting.
“Ellie,” he started, and she interrupted before he could get farther.
“Exactly what John said, Chuck. This is my decision, and John’s. He’s a good, strong man with an important job, a sense of humor, and integrity. He’ll treat me well. Unless you know something to the contrary, I don’t want to hear it.”
Chuck looked at her through eyes that were still narrowed. His gaze turned to where John and Sarah were talking, and then he tipped his head in the other direction, away from them. Disgruntled, Ellie nevertheless followed him.
“Look, Ellie,” he said in a low voice, his face a picture of stressed bemusement. “If the facts that he’s gruff, grumpy, and a government spy don’t make you think twice, you need to know this. A, uugh, a-a thing, a relationship with a mark, or anyone tangentially involved in his mission, is a conflict of interest for Casey. The NSA won’t look favorably on that. If General Beckman finds out …” he let his voice taper off, tilting his forehead forward significantly.
Ellie frowned while she crossed her arms. She felt that the day had been crazy enough that she could reasonably be excused from logical thought for the rest of it. However, the solution to this problem seemed quite clear.
“Who’s going to tell him?”
“Uh - tell who what?”
Ellie pressed her lips together in exasperation. “Your general. Who’s going to tell him anything about, about,” she waved a hand from herself to John, now the one unable to put words to her meaning, “this.” She hesitated at the word ‘relationship’ because the two of them hadn’t talked, yet, at all. John’s actions a few minutes ago, though, certainly implied that he meant to go there. That thought brought … well. Perhaps it was best just now not to consider the physical and emotional excitement that thought gave her. “I understand about conflict of interest, but in this case, I’m certainly not going to say anything. Are you?” She bit the last words out forcefully.
Chuck’s brow was furrowed as he stared at her in consternation. “Her,” he said finally, more calmly.
“What?” Ellie snapped. Her day had been long, and she was at the end of her patience.
“General Beckman is a her - is a woman. A she.”
“Fine. Are you going to be informing her, then?”
He actually considered it, she saw that in his face and his hunched posture. But then he straightened, reluctantly. “No,” he mumbled, crossing his arms petulantly.
“Good. And who sees the feed from the cameras in here?”
“Just Sarah and Casey, unless it’s something that needs to be referred to in a mission report.” Now his expression was puzzled.
“Also good. And will Sarah feel compelled to inform on us?”
“I think that’ll depend on her assessment of how well he’s doing his job,” Chuck admitted grudgingly.
“And if he does it well?”
He uncrossed his arms to hold them up in a defense mode that was only half-feigned. “Yeesh, woman, you’d make a good interrogator, you’re relentless! All right, fine, if he’s able to perform his duties … it probably won’t be an issue.”
“All right.” Ellie nodded her head, sharply. “Then we don’t have an issue. Do we?” she demanded.
“Ellie …”
She cut him off with a shake of her head. “I mean it, Chuck. This is my decision. Mine and John’s.” She turned determinedly from his disgruntled expression. As he shook his head, she moved her focus back where it wanted to be, anyway - to John.
“ ... needs to double-check the cleaning job at the house,” the agent was saying. He was striving for a no-nonsense tone, but Ellie was able to decipher that there was an ulterior motive in there somewhere. So was Sarah, apparently. Not trying very hard to hide a smirk, the female agent nodded. “You should definitely go do that, Casey. Take Ellie home while you’re at it, she looks like she needs some ... ah, rest. Chuck”- hastily, over his loud ‘No way!’, “you should come with me while I review the surveillance from earlier. See if you can, you know, make connections about any of that team.”
Chuck frowned violently at her. “I’m not letting those two go off alone together,” he snapped. “Was I the only one who saw what they were up to in there?”
John caught Ellie’s attention and jerked his head to the stairway. While Chuck was distracted by his argument with Sarah, the two of them sidled around and were halfway to the exit before he noticed they were leaving. They slid up the stairs over his yelled protests, Ellie feeling like a naughty child escaping an angry parent. A giggle climbed in her throat, though it was stalled when John grabbed her arm and held out the blindfold she’d worn on the way here. Disgruntled, she accepted his hasty placement of it over her eyes; then she followed John’s leading out into warm sunlight and what felt like the SUV in which they’d arrived. Ellie wondered briefly how Chuck and Sarah were going to get home.
The ride was silent, for which Ellie found herself thankful. It was fraught, she thought, but not so tense that she felt driven to break the quiet. John’s fingers drummed now and then on the steering wheel, but not impatiently; more contemplatively. Ellie leaned her head back and even let her eyes stay closed under the blindfold for a few moments. Sarah had been right, she was tired, but these few moments to just think were welcome.
When they parked and John turned off the engine, Ellie pulled off the blindfold. They exited the SUV and Ellie stood for a moment, relishing the sun and the fresh new-autumn air. Recalling how they’d escaped Chuck and his angry distress, she smiled, and then let out a giggle. It was good to laugh, after the emotional highs and lows of this day. Standing at the driver’s side door in the slanting rays of afternoon light, John stared at her over the top of the vehicle. Still smiling, she met his look from the passenger side. She felt warm and soft and fragile, and suspected that he saw all of that and more. The faint lines between his brows never went away, but a corner of his mouth tipped up. He leaned his right forearm on the SUV’s roof and his chin on his arm. He didn’t say anything; he just looked at her.
His blue eyes were quiet, but watching them Ellie found that she could read them. They displayed enjoyment, which kicked her own smile up another notch. They were assessing, trying to read her emotions. There was even a slight question there, asking ... well, asking what she wanted. And they were approving, of her. Just of her in general.
Ellie forgot to breathe for a space of time. She parted her lips now and drew a deep one in, and it broke the spell; John clicked the SUV’s doors locked, and at the chirping sound she was able to look away, and then follow him into the courtyard.
Being back in her house was surreal. Ellie stood in her living room and looked around, remembering bound men and guns and swift, hard violence. All that was superseded in her sensibilities, though, by something infinitely more delicate - an unseen connection that she could feel tugging at her heart, binding her to the man who stalked silently into her kitchen and bent down, doing something with ... something. She followed him, watching, pulling up in the doorway. The something was something electronic, and he seemed to be powering it off.
“Sensors,” he said shortly, straightening up. “I’m going to leave them here, but they’ll be off. For now.” He leaned against her counter where it cornered, a study in male magnetism.
Ellie nodded, paused in the doorway. She was pulled towards him by that tugging in her heart yet suddenly felt hesitant, here alone with him and the unspoken things between them. After all these months, this implicit - what? Desire? Yes. Intention? Yes. More? Yes - between them seemed so tentative, as if should she make one wrong move it would all snap, break perhaps irrevocably. She wanted to approach him, be near him, up against him, even in him somehow - and he’d clearly left that her decision to make. He wasn’t going to make the move, this time. It had to be her.
Swallowing, feeling more awkward than she ever had in her life, she put one foot in front of the other and moved into the kitchen, trailing her hand along the counter. He went preternaturally still, standing his ground and watching her advance. His eyes were intense; so intense that her steps faltered and then halted, and so he turned his head to glance in an ostentatiously business-like manner around her kitchen. Ellie felt her teeth biting at her lower lip and forced herself to stop that. The air felt heavy and thick between them, but she made herself move another step through it while John pretended nonchalance. He did it poorly. Not a nonchalant kind of guy, John Casey.
His look snagged on an empty spot on the counter and he frowned.
“Where’s the microwave?”
Grateful for something inconsequential to focus on while she gathered her courage, Ellie pursed her lips and stared at that empty spot, too. Suddenly she chuckled, a small measure of the light-heartedness she’d felt on escaping from Chuck returning.
“You know what’s ridiculous?” she asked, able to pace closer more easily while he was distracted. But then he returned his eyes to her and watched her drag her hands through her hair. The heaviness of the air between them returned, too.
“What?”
Ellie shook her head, managing a rueful smile. “I never even wanted us to have a microwave. They’re not healthy, you know, radiation and all that processed, warmed-up food.” He crooked his mouth up in a grin and again, she couldn’t move for a moment.
“Ah, I forbade it, actually, but Devon begged and begged and so I finally let him bring his old one over.” She resumed walking toward him, determinedly. He lifted one hand to place it, casually, on the same counter she was sliding hers over. “An- and then”, she stuttered, only a few steps away from him now, “when it conked out, we’d been ... well, he’d been so distant, and I wanted to ... I don’t know.” She shrugged one shoulder, a ‘what-can-you-do’ gesture. She was proud to have gotten out that many sentences that actually made sense. He looked so good, leaning on her counter and bringing more flashbacks, this time of that long-ago day when he came over to fix the microwave about which she was babbling. She was very near him now. She could feel the heat rising from his body.
John’s chuckle was low, and the sound dragged over her sensitized nerve endings like aural sex, making her draw in a ragged breath. “Well,” he said. He shifted his weight from one leg to another in a move that drew her attention to parts of him that she really shouldn’t focus on if she wanted to remain rational in any sense of the word. Ellie stopped moving, her left hand having slid on the counter top to within an inch of his. She couldn’t go forward any further without standing on his toes. “All I have to say,” John continued, his voice decidedly rougher than it had been a moment ago, “is God bless Devon and his microwave.”
As he said the last word, it cracked, because Ellie glided her hand palm-down over the top of his. John let his eyes fall closed, for just a moment, and apparently that was all he needed from her. He tilted his head down to see his palm shift around to meet hers. Her fingers had to stretch apart to fit his between them, and she watched their tandem motion with her heart quickening at the weightiness and simplicity of it. He curled his fingers around to capture her, tightly.
“You up for this?” he rasped down at her. Ellie tilted back to stare at him determinedly.
“Look, I know it’s not going to be easy. I even know that I don’t know how not-easy it’s going to be. But I”- her voice caught. She cleared it and plunged on. “I want this.” Her words were fading to a whisper, so maybe that was why his head was getting closer to hers. “I want you, John.”
His forehead was just a few centimeters away now. Ellie’s free hand came to his chest and surfed over his t-shirt, cresting his ribcage, then around to his back.
“I don’t know when or where I’m going next,” he said, one final fair warning.
Ellie nodded. “I know.” She curled fingers that trembled a little into the back of his t-shirt, while repeating an earlier sentiment. “I want as much of you as I can get, for as long as I can get it.”
She had him. Her heart soared in triumph. She had just enough time to see his eyes flare with heat before she cupped her palm to his head and pulled his lips into hers. He let out a short hoarse laugh, and she captured it demandingly with her mouth. Deep, sweet, and strong, he took over then, slanted his lips on hers, and sought her tongue with his. The hand of the arm that surely still hurt skimmed down her side and around her waist; the other clamped over her shoulders to crush her into his chest. She returned the pressure eagerly as he pivoted them ninety degrees so that the cupboards were at her back.
In one swift move, he hooked the good arm beneath her and lifted her - one-armed, and a very primal part of her thrilled at that blatant display of masculine power - onto the countertop. His fingers flashed between them, undoing buttons; from her new height advantage Ellie watched his head dip as he set his mouth, hot and hard and wonderful, below the collar of her shirt. When he started to use his teeth, she had to lean into him for support; every vertebrae she had felt like it was turning to hot plasma. Her breath coming in harsh gasps, she wriggled her hips and maneuvered her legs until her thighs clasped his waist. He growled against her skin when she applied pressure to grind her pelvis up against him.
Backing away slightly, he captured the start of her protest with his lips and muttered, “Bed. Or couch. Or something.”
Nodding, willing to acquiesce to anything to get him to continue doing what he’d been doing, Ellie flung a hand over her shoulder at the couch. It was closer. John pulled her down off the counter, and half-carried, half-dragged her to it. By the time her knees bumped the cushion, Ellie was giggling. But the spurt of amusement was quickly drowned in the flood of sensation engendered by his hands and lips and teeth and other parts as they fell onto the couch.
A long time later, she rubbed her cheek indolently over the bare chest beneath her head. She tilted her face up; above her, John’s eyes were closed, but he wasn’t asleep - one hand was rubbing slow circles over her back.
“So,” she said into the quiet, “I’m still supposed to call you John?”
His eyes slid open lazily, but the gaze beneath them was as keen as ever. “Yes,” he told her.
“It’s your real name?” She squinted at him, assessing, wondering if he would tell her if it wasn’t.
His eyes were quietly evaluating, too, as he focused them on her. “Now it is,” he said, and nothing more while she once more faced reality. “I’m Major John Casey.”
Major. That was information she hadn’t had before, and she nodded in appreciation of his bestowing it. It balanced out the other fact - that while he was telling her as much truth as he could, if he had another name she couldn’t know it.
That hurt. But it came with the package, and she’d already accepted the package. She very much wanted to keep the package as long as possible. So deal, she told herself sternly.
“Well this is just great.” When she spoke again it was in a determinedly lighter vein. “You’re not just the sexiest man I’ve ever known, you have a sexy job. How am I supposed to resist that?”
He grunted, and she could feel it rumble through his chest. Damn, the man could make even a grunt just as sexy as hell. “You’re not,” he growled in her ear. The sensation shortened her breath while making her want to somehow crawl inside his skin, to the place where all those delicious vibrations originated.
Ellie relaxed back down onto him, but didn’t get a chance to recline there before he tensed beneath her and then flipped them over so that he was above her, staring down into her face. “Hey, watch your arm,” she warned.
“I’ll worry about the arm,” he returned. “You have other things to think about.”
“Oh yeah?” she challenged, grinning fiercely up at him. “Like what?”
“Well.” He dipped down to nip lightly at the corner of her mouth. “Like the fact that it’s about time for your genius-geek brother to be coming in.”
“Hmm.” That gave her pause for about two seconds, before his hand drifted down between them and hazed her thinking. “Well, as things stand right now,” her words momentarily paused as he moved his fingers and she gasped, “what he’d get would be a good view of your backside.”
She laughed, because now he was the one to halt. “Good point,” he admitted.
So the two of them moved the proceedings into her room, and Chuck’s eyesight was spared further damage when he did arrive home. Later that night, though, his hearing wasn’t.
Also: don't shoot me, but one of my quarrels with the show, plot-wise, is that so many people who know the truth or a part of the truth are being allowed to run around loose. Don't you think they'd have been quietly disappeared with a nice cover story about moving to New Brunswick, CA? But it's canon that they're still in the real world, and Chuck was the one to talk the authorities into that state of affairs. So I've used that plot device here. It seems a little cheap but I hope no one minds too much!
Bold
Sarah’s eyes were huge. She was biting her lips, and her gaze slid between the spectacle in the cell - her partner John Casey, wrapped amorously around an asset’s sister - and said asset, Chuck. With her hand on Chuck’s shoulder, the blonde was murmuring “it’s OK, it’s OK” over and over in a distinctly worried tone.
Chuck’s eyes weren’t visible, because he’d clamped a forearm across them. Behind it, his head shook back and forth. “No it isn’t!” he burst out. “I don’t know what it ... it ... that is, but it’s definitely NOT OK!”
Ellie was able to sense in her own chest the growl that rumbled through John. Despite the quivery feelings it gave her, she pushed against his torso. He slowly turned her loose, while glaring over her head at her brother. If Chuck had been looking, Ellie was certain he would have been truly intimidated. For her part, it was just endearing. She brushed her hand along John’s shoulder caressingly, thrilled to be able to do so, and thrilled even more that it seemed to settle him a bit.
Sarah formed her features into a pointedly bland expression, and took a step to unlock the cell door. Sensing her movement, Chuck grasped one-handed at her, still keeping his eyes covered. “No,” he blurted, “don’t let them out. Don’t let them out until they promise to never, ever, do that again.”
Sarah smiled at the absurdity of this. “Chuck,” she reasoned placatingly, “we can’t keep them in there until they promise to behave. They’re not small children.”
“Maybe not,” he asserted, “but they’ve been very, very, very” - his hand was batting at the air in between the ‘very’s, as though out of its thinness he could procure words strong enough to adequately portray his emotions, “very, very, bad.”
Sarah chuckled, patted his arm consolingly, and unlocked the cell door while he took his arm from over his face to glare at her. “Chuck talked the General out of relocating you,” she said to Ellie, apparently deciding to forego the knottier issue of kissing to deal with the comparatively simpler one of national security.
“He did?” John’s voice, from behind Ellie, sounded surprised. She edged a little hesitantly out into the larger room, and he followed her. Standing facing the other two, Ellie felt reality rushing at her and with it questions. Chief among them were, what does this mean? and now what? Both applied to more than one situation of import.
Chuck eyed the two of them through slitted lids. “I think it may be awhile before my eyesight returns,” he said conversationally to no one in particular. Ellie frowned in his direction but spoke to Sarah.
“What does that mean? I can keep my home? My job? My, my life?”
“For the foreseeable future, yes.” Sarah’s focus moved over Ellie’s shoulder, to her partner’s face. From behind her where Sarah couldn’t see, Ellie felt John touch the small of her back with his knuckles and sweep his fingers slowly up and down. An undercover caress, conveying both comfort and congratulations. It was unexpected, sweet enough to choke her up.
“Of course,” Sarah continued with an arched brow, “this means we’re even more entrenched here, since bringing in new agents for anything long-term might increase a civilian’s” - she tipped her head at Ellie, who realized belatedly that in this scenario she was the civilian - “knowledge of our personnel and the mission. Which could increase the danger quotient for everyone involved.” Though the agent had been addressing them all, Ellie knew her words up to that point were for the benefit of the civilian, the only person present who wouldn’t already know the reasoning behind these precautions. Now, though, Sarah focused in on John. “Our duties expand, to protection of Ellie. It doesn’t look like that’ll bother you, much ...” she let her voice trail off suggestively. Ellie blushed. Behind her, John grunted - not an affirmation, and not a denial.
His hand was still on her back, though, and so her abdominal muscles were all tight and quivering. Was she ever going to get over this reaction to him?
“Chuck,” she said, trying to think about other things, rather more important things. “I don’t know how you did that, or, or ... I don’t know. But thank you.” She stepped forward - regrettably, away from John - to give her brother a fierce hug. “Thank you,” she whispered again into his ear.
He held her closely and just as fiercely. “Hey, it was for me too. I won’t do this without you. I want you safe, I want all of us safe, but” - he backed away, to stare at her. “You have to understand, this is only for as long as the situation is status quo. Anything changes, the deal changes. It’s all really very up in the air. And it means a lot of surveillance. You’ll see lots more of Sarah and” - his face twisted momentarily- “Casey. There’ll be eyes on you at work, probably, and other stuff. And you can’t know details. What you know now, that’s it. Nothing more.” He searched her face worriedly. “Is that ... can you deal with that?”
Ellie took a deep breath, trying to take in what he was saying to her, and trying to be as brutally honest with him as he had just been with her. “I probably can’t understand well enough yet to know what it is you’re asking me to deal with. But if I can stay here, keep my life - if those are the conditions, so be it. I’ll take it for as long as I can get it. And thank you for it every day, if need be.”
“No, no need,” he returned hastily. His neck was red in that way he had when he got embarrassed. Ellie was cheered by this sign that in some ways he was still her awkward, endearing little brother. “But,” he continued in a more aggressive tone, “how about instead of saying ‘thanks’ every day, you just agree to never do ... that” - he waved vaguely toward the cell she and John had recently exited, as though even looking that direction again was too traumatic - “with him. Ever. For as long as we both shall live.” He frowned fiercely at her, ignoring her rolled eyes. “PROMISE me, Ellie.” He waited expectantly.
Ellie’s fists found her hips as her gratitude toward Chuck swiftly waned. He was putting her in an unfeasible situation. There was no possible response she could make to his foolishness that wouldn’t be either a lie, obvious and weak hedging, or an open declaration that she absolutely wanted to do that again. With no one else but John. Over and over again.
It was maybe time for such a declaration, but she didn’t want to make it in front of her brother and Sarah and who knew how many surveillance cameras.
Oh, gods, surveillance cameras. Ellie was suddenly the one turning red as she remembered what she’d recently been up to in front of them. Would that General person see -
A hard muscled arm suddenly slid firmly around her waist, startling her. John stood just behind her, curving his knuckles territorially over her hip. The mortified flow Ellie’s thoughts had been following halted abruptly in a heated puddle. She let him step up against her body, delighting in the solid feel of him at her back. Chuck’s eyes narrowed and he opened his mouth to decry this action, but he was forestalled.
“Nice job with the General,” John said over Ellie’s head. There was warning in his tone. “Probably want to quit while you’re ahead.” His other, good arm came across her chest to hold her shoulder. It was all very alpha male and proprietary; he was staking a claim. That spilled a thrill through to Ellie’s heart even as she frowned; she had a vague sense that as a strong, independent woman she wasn’t supposed to allow claim-staking. But he felt so good, there against her spine and surrounding her ... and then he spoke again and alleviated any need for objection.
“Anything else,” he said with a quick constriction of his good arm that squeezed away her breath, while heating her loins, “is up to Ellie.” He dropped both his arms and let her go, every bit as suddenly as he’d encompassed her.
Ellie wanted him back. Up to Ellie. What lovely, lovely words ...
He’d turned away and was talking to Sarah, all business. Well, almost. Ellie took a few seconds to try to glare her brother into submission, because he was still vocally protesting.
“Ellie,” he started, and she interrupted before he could get farther.
“Exactly what John said, Chuck. This is my decision, and John’s. He’s a good, strong man with an important job, a sense of humor, and integrity. He’ll treat me well. Unless you know something to the contrary, I don’t want to hear it.”
Chuck looked at her through eyes that were still narrowed. His gaze turned to where John and Sarah were talking, and then he tipped his head in the other direction, away from them. Disgruntled, Ellie nevertheless followed him.
“Look, Ellie,” he said in a low voice, his face a picture of stressed bemusement. “If the facts that he’s gruff, grumpy, and a government spy don’t make you think twice, you need to know this. A, uugh, a-a thing, a relationship with a mark, or anyone tangentially involved in his mission, is a conflict of interest for Casey. The NSA won’t look favorably on that. If General Beckman finds out …” he let his voice taper off, tilting his forehead forward significantly.
Ellie frowned while she crossed her arms. She felt that the day had been crazy enough that she could reasonably be excused from logical thought for the rest of it. However, the solution to this problem seemed quite clear.
“Who’s going to tell him?”
“Uh - tell who what?”
Ellie pressed her lips together in exasperation. “Your general. Who’s going to tell him anything about, about,” she waved a hand from herself to John, now the one unable to put words to her meaning, “this.” She hesitated at the word ‘relationship’ because the two of them hadn’t talked, yet, at all. John’s actions a few minutes ago, though, certainly implied that he meant to go there. That thought brought … well. Perhaps it was best just now not to consider the physical and emotional excitement that thought gave her. “I understand about conflict of interest, but in this case, I’m certainly not going to say anything. Are you?” She bit the last words out forcefully.
Chuck’s brow was furrowed as he stared at her in consternation. “Her,” he said finally, more calmly.
“What?” Ellie snapped. Her day had been long, and she was at the end of her patience.
“General Beckman is a her - is a woman. A she.”
“Fine. Are you going to be informing her, then?”
He actually considered it, she saw that in his face and his hunched posture. But then he straightened, reluctantly. “No,” he mumbled, crossing his arms petulantly.
“Good. And who sees the feed from the cameras in here?”
“Just Sarah and Casey, unless it’s something that needs to be referred to in a mission report.” Now his expression was puzzled.
“Also good. And will Sarah feel compelled to inform on us?”
“I think that’ll depend on her assessment of how well he’s doing his job,” Chuck admitted grudgingly.
“And if he does it well?”
He uncrossed his arms to hold them up in a defense mode that was only half-feigned. “Yeesh, woman, you’d make a good interrogator, you’re relentless! All right, fine, if he’s able to perform his duties … it probably won’t be an issue.”
“All right.” Ellie nodded her head, sharply. “Then we don’t have an issue. Do we?” she demanded.
“Ellie …”
She cut him off with a shake of her head. “I mean it, Chuck. This is my decision. Mine and John’s.” She turned determinedly from his disgruntled expression. As he shook his head, she moved her focus back where it wanted to be, anyway - to John.
“ ... needs to double-check the cleaning job at the house,” the agent was saying. He was striving for a no-nonsense tone, but Ellie was able to decipher that there was an ulterior motive in there somewhere. So was Sarah, apparently. Not trying very hard to hide a smirk, the female agent nodded. “You should definitely go do that, Casey. Take Ellie home while you’re at it, she looks like she needs some ... ah, rest. Chuck”- hastily, over his loud ‘No way!’, “you should come with me while I review the surveillance from earlier. See if you can, you know, make connections about any of that team.”
Chuck frowned violently at her. “I’m not letting those two go off alone together,” he snapped. “Was I the only one who saw what they were up to in there?”
John caught Ellie’s attention and jerked his head to the stairway. While Chuck was distracted by his argument with Sarah, the two of them sidled around and were halfway to the exit before he noticed they were leaving. They slid up the stairs over his yelled protests, Ellie feeling like a naughty child escaping an angry parent. A giggle climbed in her throat, though it was stalled when John grabbed her arm and held out the blindfold she’d worn on the way here. Disgruntled, she accepted his hasty placement of it over her eyes; then she followed John’s leading out into warm sunlight and what felt like the SUV in which they’d arrived. Ellie wondered briefly how Chuck and Sarah were going to get home.
The ride was silent, for which Ellie found herself thankful. It was fraught, she thought, but not so tense that she felt driven to break the quiet. John’s fingers drummed now and then on the steering wheel, but not impatiently; more contemplatively. Ellie leaned her head back and even let her eyes stay closed under the blindfold for a few moments. Sarah had been right, she was tired, but these few moments to just think were welcome.
When they parked and John turned off the engine, Ellie pulled off the blindfold. They exited the SUV and Ellie stood for a moment, relishing the sun and the fresh new-autumn air. Recalling how they’d escaped Chuck and his angry distress, she smiled, and then let out a giggle. It was good to laugh, after the emotional highs and lows of this day. Standing at the driver’s side door in the slanting rays of afternoon light, John stared at her over the top of the vehicle. Still smiling, she met his look from the passenger side. She felt warm and soft and fragile, and suspected that he saw all of that and more. The faint lines between his brows never went away, but a corner of his mouth tipped up. He leaned his right forearm on the SUV’s roof and his chin on his arm. He didn’t say anything; he just looked at her.
His blue eyes were quiet, but watching them Ellie found that she could read them. They displayed enjoyment, which kicked her own smile up another notch. They were assessing, trying to read her emotions. There was even a slight question there, asking ... well, asking what she wanted. And they were approving, of her. Just of her in general.
Ellie forgot to breathe for a space of time. She parted her lips now and drew a deep one in, and it broke the spell; John clicked the SUV’s doors locked, and at the chirping sound she was able to look away, and then follow him into the courtyard.
Being back in her house was surreal. Ellie stood in her living room and looked around, remembering bound men and guns and swift, hard violence. All that was superseded in her sensibilities, though, by something infinitely more delicate - an unseen connection that she could feel tugging at her heart, binding her to the man who stalked silently into her kitchen and bent down, doing something with ... something. She followed him, watching, pulling up in the doorway. The something was something electronic, and he seemed to be powering it off.
“Sensors,” he said shortly, straightening up. “I’m going to leave them here, but they’ll be off. For now.” He leaned against her counter where it cornered, a study in male magnetism.
Ellie nodded, paused in the doorway. She was pulled towards him by that tugging in her heart yet suddenly felt hesitant, here alone with him and the unspoken things between them. After all these months, this implicit - what? Desire? Yes. Intention? Yes. More? Yes - between them seemed so tentative, as if should she make one wrong move it would all snap, break perhaps irrevocably. She wanted to approach him, be near him, up against him, even in him somehow - and he’d clearly left that her decision to make. He wasn’t going to make the move, this time. It had to be her.
Swallowing, feeling more awkward than she ever had in her life, she put one foot in front of the other and moved into the kitchen, trailing her hand along the counter. He went preternaturally still, standing his ground and watching her advance. His eyes were intense; so intense that her steps faltered and then halted, and so he turned his head to glance in an ostentatiously business-like manner around her kitchen. Ellie felt her teeth biting at her lower lip and forced herself to stop that. The air felt heavy and thick between them, but she made herself move another step through it while John pretended nonchalance. He did it poorly. Not a nonchalant kind of guy, John Casey.
His look snagged on an empty spot on the counter and he frowned.
“Where’s the microwave?”
Grateful for something inconsequential to focus on while she gathered her courage, Ellie pursed her lips and stared at that empty spot, too. Suddenly she chuckled, a small measure of the light-heartedness she’d felt on escaping from Chuck returning.
“You know what’s ridiculous?” she asked, able to pace closer more easily while he was distracted. But then he returned his eyes to her and watched her drag her hands through her hair. The heaviness of the air between them returned, too.
“What?”
Ellie shook her head, managing a rueful smile. “I never even wanted us to have a microwave. They’re not healthy, you know, radiation and all that processed, warmed-up food.” He crooked his mouth up in a grin and again, she couldn’t move for a moment.
“Ah, I forbade it, actually, but Devon begged and begged and so I finally let him bring his old one over.” She resumed walking toward him, determinedly. He lifted one hand to place it, casually, on the same counter she was sliding hers over. “An- and then”, she stuttered, only a few steps away from him now, “when it conked out, we’d been ... well, he’d been so distant, and I wanted to ... I don’t know.” She shrugged one shoulder, a ‘what-can-you-do’ gesture. She was proud to have gotten out that many sentences that actually made sense. He looked so good, leaning on her counter and bringing more flashbacks, this time of that long-ago day when he came over to fix the microwave about which she was babbling. She was very near him now. She could feel the heat rising from his body.
John’s chuckle was low, and the sound dragged over her sensitized nerve endings like aural sex, making her draw in a ragged breath. “Well,” he said. He shifted his weight from one leg to another in a move that drew her attention to parts of him that she really shouldn’t focus on if she wanted to remain rational in any sense of the word. Ellie stopped moving, her left hand having slid on the counter top to within an inch of his. She couldn’t go forward any further without standing on his toes. “All I have to say,” John continued, his voice decidedly rougher than it had been a moment ago, “is God bless Devon and his microwave.”
As he said the last word, it cracked, because Ellie glided her hand palm-down over the top of his. John let his eyes fall closed, for just a moment, and apparently that was all he needed from her. He tilted his head down to see his palm shift around to meet hers. Her fingers had to stretch apart to fit his between them, and she watched their tandem motion with her heart quickening at the weightiness and simplicity of it. He curled his fingers around to capture her, tightly.
“You up for this?” he rasped down at her. Ellie tilted back to stare at him determinedly.
“Look, I know it’s not going to be easy. I even know that I don’t know how not-easy it’s going to be. But I”- her voice caught. She cleared it and plunged on. “I want this.” Her words were fading to a whisper, so maybe that was why his head was getting closer to hers. “I want you, John.”
His forehead was just a few centimeters away now. Ellie’s free hand came to his chest and surfed over his t-shirt, cresting his ribcage, then around to his back.
“I don’t know when or where I’m going next,” he said, one final fair warning.
Ellie nodded. “I know.” She curled fingers that trembled a little into the back of his t-shirt, while repeating an earlier sentiment. “I want as much of you as I can get, for as long as I can get it.”
She had him. Her heart soared in triumph. She had just enough time to see his eyes flare with heat before she cupped her palm to his head and pulled his lips into hers. He let out a short hoarse laugh, and she captured it demandingly with her mouth. Deep, sweet, and strong, he took over then, slanted his lips on hers, and sought her tongue with his. The hand of the arm that surely still hurt skimmed down her side and around her waist; the other clamped over her shoulders to crush her into his chest. She returned the pressure eagerly as he pivoted them ninety degrees so that the cupboards were at her back.
In one swift move, he hooked the good arm beneath her and lifted her - one-armed, and a very primal part of her thrilled at that blatant display of masculine power - onto the countertop. His fingers flashed between them, undoing buttons; from her new height advantage Ellie watched his head dip as he set his mouth, hot and hard and wonderful, below the collar of her shirt. When he started to use his teeth, she had to lean into him for support; every vertebrae she had felt like it was turning to hot plasma. Her breath coming in harsh gasps, she wriggled her hips and maneuvered her legs until her thighs clasped his waist. He growled against her skin when she applied pressure to grind her pelvis up against him.
Backing away slightly, he captured the start of her protest with his lips and muttered, “Bed. Or couch. Or something.”
Nodding, willing to acquiesce to anything to get him to continue doing what he’d been doing, Ellie flung a hand over her shoulder at the couch. It was closer. John pulled her down off the counter, and half-carried, half-dragged her to it. By the time her knees bumped the cushion, Ellie was giggling. But the spurt of amusement was quickly drowned in the flood of sensation engendered by his hands and lips and teeth and other parts as they fell onto the couch.
A long time later, she rubbed her cheek indolently over the bare chest beneath her head. She tilted her face up; above her, John’s eyes were closed, but he wasn’t asleep - one hand was rubbing slow circles over her back.
“So,” she said into the quiet, “I’m still supposed to call you John?”
His eyes slid open lazily, but the gaze beneath them was as keen as ever. “Yes,” he told her.
“It’s your real name?” She squinted at him, assessing, wondering if he would tell her if it wasn’t.
His eyes were quietly evaluating, too, as he focused them on her. “Now it is,” he said, and nothing more while she once more faced reality. “I’m Major John Casey.”
Major. That was information she hadn’t had before, and she nodded in appreciation of his bestowing it. It balanced out the other fact - that while he was telling her as much truth as he could, if he had another name she couldn’t know it.
That hurt. But it came with the package, and she’d already accepted the package. She very much wanted to keep the package as long as possible. So deal, she told herself sternly.
“Well this is just great.” When she spoke again it was in a determinedly lighter vein. “You’re not just the sexiest man I’ve ever known, you have a sexy job. How am I supposed to resist that?”
He grunted, and she could feel it rumble through his chest. Damn, the man could make even a grunt just as sexy as hell. “You’re not,” he growled in her ear. The sensation shortened her breath while making her want to somehow crawl inside his skin, to the place where all those delicious vibrations originated.
Ellie relaxed back down onto him, but didn’t get a chance to recline there before he tensed beneath her and then flipped them over so that he was above her, staring down into her face. “Hey, watch your arm,” she warned.
“I’ll worry about the arm,” he returned. “You have other things to think about.”
“Oh yeah?” she challenged, grinning fiercely up at him. “Like what?”
“Well.” He dipped down to nip lightly at the corner of her mouth. “Like the fact that it’s about time for your genius-geek brother to be coming in.”
“Hmm.” That gave her pause for about two seconds, before his hand drifted down between them and hazed her thinking. “Well, as things stand right now,” her words momentarily paused as he moved his fingers and she gasped, “what he’d get would be a good view of your backside.”
She laughed, because now he was the one to halt. “Good point,” he admitted.
So the two of them moved the proceedings into her room, and Chuck’s eyesight was spared further damage when he did arrive home. Later that night, though, his hearing wasn’t.