Gehenna - chapter 4
A/N: I miss Chuck gosh-darnit! Why won’t the 20th come any faster?
Title: Gehenna
Pairing: Casey/Chuck; as well as one-sided Shaw/Chuck
Rating: Nc-17
Previous chapters: chapter 1 / chapter 2 / chapter 3
Spoilers: Up to, and including, the Season 2 finale - takes place directly after the S2 finale
Warnings: Some very depressing moments, sexual content, heavy drug manipulation, and possible dub-con
Disclaimer: Chuck, unfortunately, isn’t mine
Summary: Chuck tenses but Casey’s hand is back on his wrist, firm but comforting as the doctor pulls an oxygen mask over his mouth. It sends a jolt of fear down his spine, brief and brilliant through the haze, and then all he sees is nothing.
And it scares him more than anything else ever could.
~*~Chuck~*~
When he dreams of Morgan, he can almost forget he’s in hell.
It’s a welcomed surprise when he finds himself seated at his kitchen table, lucid dreamer, cards in hand, calling “Go Fish” when Morgan asks for a five. Outside the window, the sky is dull and grey. The trees have lost their green. The courtyard fountain is bare.
This is his world without colour.
“You do realize this is what they would’ve done to you years ago,” Morgan says casually as he takes another card from the pile. “I mean, that is if Sarah and Casey hadn’t agreed to let you stay in Burbank.”
Chuck realizes then that he’s nervous. He’s been bouncing his knee under the table up until now and tries to remedy that by steadying it discreetly with his free hand. Somehow, it doesn’t work. “What should I do?”
“Trust Casey, I suppose. He’s always been loyal to the cause.”
“And Daniel Shaw?”
“I’m not sure...” he murmurs. Then he glances over Chuck’s shoulder, frowning in careful consideration. “Maybe you should ask him?”
Chuck turns in his seat, craning his neck to look at Shaw. The man is standing, waiting, quietly on the other side of his couch. Smiling...
“Talk about puberty,” Morgan adds, almost as an afterthought. “I mean, when have your hormones ever been such a mess?”
“That doesn’t help, Morgan.”
“I call it as I see it.”
“He’s right,” Shaw agrees. “But I know how to fix that.”
Chuck blinks. He’s still nervous. “How?”
Shaw manoeuvres around the couch, smooth, liquid fire, like something that shouldn’t be real, and takes Chuck by the hand, pulls him up, leads him down the hallway...
“I don’t think this is going to work,” Chuck murmurs quietly when they slow to a halt outside his bedroom. The light is dimmer here, his room a dark gaping abyss.
The dream is fading.
“Just relax,” Shaw whispers, lifting a hand to cup the side of his face, cold to the touch-but Chuck doesn’t flinch, not even when Shaw leans in to kiss him. Gently.
But then he wakes.
And he remembers there’s no Morgan.
~*~Chuck~*~
He stirs from his heavy slumber covered in sweat, back sticky, hair ruffled and sleep mussed, to the sound of his someone moving around at the foot of his bed. When he opens his eyes to face the day, he’s greeted with the image of one Colonel John Casey leaning over him, frowning in concern, here to deliver his morning medication.
“More pills?” he sighs.
Casey grunts and hands him the Dixie cup. Then a glass of water. Chuck downs everything without hassle buts knows Casey would find a way to toss those pills if he asked-if there wasn’t a camera mounted in the top, northeast corner of the room. They’re expected to behave, and behave they will as long as no one interferes.
He’s been seeing Casey on a daily basis for the last three weeks. Shaw pops up every now and again to play chess or cards, or to talk to him about current events. To the untrained eye, these encounters are rather unremarkable-mundane, one might say-but for Chuck, it accounts for his only genuine human contact since he was institutionalized. The physicians’ concerns lie solely in his physical health; the guards, his immediate safety. But in the company of either Shaw or Casey, he feels a sense of nurturing for what is buried beneath the surface of his ennui.
As Chuck sits up, elbows resting against bent knees, head hanging in exhaustion between his legs, he feels the bed dip beside his hip as Casey takes a seat beside him. It is then that Chuck realizes how odd it is that such an interaction between them is not odd, how he no longer cares for his personal space when doctors or orderlies or company invades it. He used to despise how casually he had been manhandled in the past. Now, it just doesn’t matter.
He pauses a moment as he searches for something to say, but his dream is foremost on his mind and Chuck shifts uncomfortably where he sits, palpitant, as something warm and familiar coils in the pit of his stomach. There’s an uneasiness there, both nauseating and arousing, an old burn he hasn’t felt in quite some time. He is quietly humiliated by the sudden excitation-as though he was young again, gangly and awkward, waging war against his body-and doesn’t dare move from his spot in the fear that Casey might notice, might be disgusted, might leave...
He’s not entirely sure what spurred it on, the imaginary kiss or the inviting heat radiating from his friend, but he tries to clear his mind of both and focuses instead on the sight of Morgan sitting across his kitchen table, cards in hand, trying to devise whether or not Chuck is really holding the five he needed...
“...I need a moment,” Chuck says eventually. He’s able to quash the feeling, slow the blood flow between his legs, but the nausea is persistent and he really needs his space. “I’ll meet you outside in an hour. Okay?”
Chuck can feel the man staring at him. The silence is deafening. His eyes burn.
“...Alright.”
His chest constricts suddenly-he can barely breathe-but Casey keeps his dagger of a tongue behind his lips and leaves him to his peace, alone, tears stinging in his eyes...
He doesn’t care if the camera’s watching him. As soon as the door closes firmly behind his friend, he loses all composure; covers his mouth with his hand, screws his eyes shut tight, tries harder than he ever has before not to cry...
This wave of emotion is too foreign to him now. Chuck can’t imagine how he ever managed it in the past, back when he wore his heart on his sleeve and didn’t care much for what anybody said about him.
He wishes the pills would start their magic already.
...He wishes Casey would’ve stayed.
~*~Casey~*~
He hesitates in the hallway.
The guards posted on either side of Chuck’s door ignore him as he has a ‘moment’, the closest thing to a paralyzing fear that he’s experienced in a good, long time... But he compartmentalizes it exactly as he’s been trained, buries it away in the back of his mind, and the ‘moment’ passes. Just like that. He’s Colonel John Casey again, the master of his emotions, badass and angry to the core.
There’s no room for hesitation in this backward life of his.
He straightens his tie as he paces quietly to the elevator. He rides it up a couple of floors, works his way through the winding maze that constitutes this hell, and eventually finds himself standing outside the door to Shaw’s office. For a second, he’s not entirely certain what he should do. Keeping his cover is his top priority, but watching Chuck’s odd behaviour, how alone and recluse he’s become over the months, is starting to wear away at his nerves and he’s not sure if he can take it anymore.
He wants to kick down the goddamn door...
Instead, he smoothes out the front of his suit and invites himself in.
Either Shaw is psychic of Casey’s timing is off, because the moment he sets foot inside the room his wall screen turns blank. All Casey can catch is a glimpse of Chuck sitting on his bed, hunched over, seemingly frozen in time...
“What’s wrong with him?”
Shaw is visibly startled. He turns sharply to face his guest before smiling somewhat, almost as though he’s been waiting for Casey to ask that very question for a while now, as though this is how he was hoping the whole thing would unravel. His answer of, “Absolutely nothing,” is anything but comforting.
“Bullshit.”
“Not a word of lie,” Shaw assures him, taking a seat behind his desk. “Chuck is right on schedule.”
“That’s Bartowski to you,” Casey snaps. As if Shaw has any idea what kind of person the kid is-as if he’s taken even a moment of his precious time to go and introduce himself, perhaps even explain a little of what’s happening to the poor boy... “And I don’t know who gave you permission to fuck around with his head, but if you don’t s-”
“-Colonel,” he chastises sharply. Still smiling. That smug son of a bitch... “As adamant as General Beckham is to have you on this team, it is well within my powers to have you permanently removed from the premises.”
Casey bites down on his tongue; tries damn hard not to break anything. He can do this.
He can.
For Chuck.
“Explain,” he grunts.
Shaw looks momentarily conflicted, but he takes the win for what it is.
“...This experiment is not my own,” he begins, “but it works, despite how controversial it might seem. It’s never failed before.”
Casey feels like snorting, but he doesn’t.
“Apathy is something Chuck’s neglected in the past-you’ve said so yourself. Your reports are riddled with reprimands for his behaviour despite your obvious pride in his unexpected courage and integrity, and we believe Chuck can be an even greater asset to this country if we can remedy that.”
“You want to cut his hormones off at the knees.”
“No. Quite the contrary, actually. Part of the experiment is to let the subject vent regularly that in a way that is neither violent to the subject himself or threatening to the control the handler has over him.”
Casey wants to make a snide remark, but his stomach sinks at the implications of Shaw’s explanation. He has an inkling of where the man is taking this-has heard this speech too many times before. Phrased a little differently, of course, but it amounts to pretty much the same thing. “...Don’t say it.”
The side of Shaw’s mouth quirks up, just a little, like a proper sociopath. “Sex.”
“I don’t...” Casey feels his mouth go dry. “You’re not...”
“After a little deliberation, we’ve determined that you fit what we’re looking for-you’re old friends, after all, and he trusts you more than he does anyone else.”
“But Sarah-”
“No, not Sarah... If we were to only take his incredibly social nature into consideration, she’d be our first pick, but she’s unpredictable at the best of times and we can’t trust her not to skip town with him if given the chance. No...I think we need someone who’s lacking a woman’s touch, who can be firm with him when the situation calls for it.”
“I’m not sleeping with him,” Casey growls. He hopes it sounds final. “And he won’t want to sleep with me.”
“Don’t be so quick to judge, Colonel. Lately, he’s been given minor stimulates directly before your visits and our research suggests that he’s warming up to you. Just ‘amiable’ I suppose, as you’ve said so yourself, but we plan to increase the dose gradually until you feel he’s ready. I’ll leave the ‘when’ entirely up to you.”
...He feels a little as though someone’s kneed him. Hard.
Casey’s been asked to take a number of bullets for his country in the past, and this would hardly be the first time they’ve ordered him to sexually engage someone of the same gender, but...He doesn’t know how to describe it. This is about the equivalent of asking a guy to bed his little brother.
“And if I don’t sleep with him?” He asks. “Or if he refuses to do it?”
“He’ll do it.”
“You’re asking me to rape him.”
“Colonel,” Shaw sighs, “we already have another candidate picked for the job, so I think it goes without saying that if you’re not willing to do it, he will.”
And that stops him. Cold.
There’s a sharp pain in his chest.
He’s going to be sick.
Shaw is watching him carefully now, fingers steepled over his desk, piecing something together in the back of his mind. “...There’s no shame in telling me you’d much rather withdraw your involvement in this operation. I don’t see why it should be added to your report. You’ve been a great asset to us so far and-”
“You don’t get it...” Casey murmurs. “Do you?”
“Quite frankly, Colonel, I really don’t see what there is to get.”
“He’s not an enemy-he’s a decent person. I’m sure if you talked to him, you’d see that.”
“I know,” Shaw says, “In fact, I believe the Intersect couldn’t have fallen into better hands.”
“Then why the hell are you tormenting him?”
Something flashes in Shaw’s eye but the man doesn’t move a muscle. Casey can’t put a name to it but he’s seen it before, the look a man gets in his eyes when he’s about to die and he’s planning on taking the rest of the goddamn world with him.
“...That’s something I don’t expect you to ever understand.”
...And he could say so many things to that, argue his point a little further, but he’s said too much as it is already and Stephen would kill him if he were to get himself cut off from ever seeing Chuck again. And maybe, just maybe, they can work this to their advantage...
Casey looks down for a moment. Just stares at his feet until he can compose himself.
“...How long do I have?”
“Until Christmas I should think, but we’ll see how things progress.”
A knock on the door interrupts Casey’s next question and Dr. Jewett invites himself, smiling, holding a file of results. Casey hates the weasel of a man but refrains from say anything until the doctor’s excused himself from the room.
“...I take it you’re going to give this a try?” Shaw asks eventually, flipping through the pages.
“To be honest...I would much rather do this than leave it to the hands of a perfect stranger.”
“How noble,” Shaw murmurs, but he’s smiling again and he looks oddly satisfied with his answer, as though he knew all along that this is where their argument would end. “I don’t think I need to remind you that Chuck doesn’t need to know about any of this.”
Casey dignifies him with a grunt.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
“Mind if I ask one more question?”
Shaw spares him a glance; looks genuinely interested... “Go ahead.”
“Who exactly are you going after?”
There’s that flash again. Casey knows there’s more to it than what meets the eye but Shaw is good at hiding it behind his smile.
“An old foe, Colonel.”
“They have a name?”
“Yes...” He sighs. And then, “...The Ring.”
AN: Wow...I’m really starting to run out of things to say in the author’s note. Just...give me a poke if you see any mistakes or if there’s something else you’d like to say.
PS: I love you (reviewers and non-reviewers alike).
:)