Fic: What You Don't Know... (2/?) Chuck/Supernatural, Chuck/Sam, PG-13
Title: What You Don’t Know (Can Come Back From the Dead and Kill You) pt. 2/?
Author: nevcolleil
Fandom(s): Chuck/Supernatural
Pairing: Chuck Bartowski/Sam Winchester
Rating: PG
Summary: Part 2: In which Chuck realizes that last week’s killer ghost was just the start of his problems, Sam realizes there is more to Charles Bartowski than meets the eye, and the author realizes that a make-out scene is probably a bit premature (but writes one anyway).
Part 1
As it turns out, committing a major felony alongside a guy can bring the two of you much closer.
A week ago Chuck had never spoken to the ginormously tall law student with the shaggy brown hair and the cute dimples he sees poring over a textbook at a table in the library just now. Then Sam had saved him from being an angry ghost’s punching bag. Next thing you know they were digging up a guy’s grave and torching his bones.
Now Chuck feels only a little bit awkward as he approaches Sam, wiping sweaty palms on the front of his jeans. Sam looks up.
It’s entirely possible that Chuck’s response to the circumstance of having faced and defeated a ghost with Sam is unique. Maybe the trauma of being forced to kill a supernatural being isn’t like the trauma of surviving a plane crash or being trapped in a caved-in mine - things you always hear about as bringing complete strangers together.
Maybe it wasn’t a traumatic experience in Sam’s perspective. He told Chuck that he grew up hunting scary things Chuck always thought were imaginary. Like some kids grew up in a family of doctors or lawyers… or computer engineers… Sam grew up in a family of hunters. Coming to Stanford and becoming a lawyer is Sam’s idea of “rebelling”. Perhaps a ghost-hunt isn’t Sam’s idea of a life-changing event?
Chuck hopes the worst-case scenario, in any case, is that Sam isn’t nearly as psyched to see Chuck at this moment as Chuck is to see Sam. He hopes the last week wasn’t just in his head - terrifying as it had been.
“Oh. Hey, Chuck,” Sam says with a smile.
Chuck relaxes - as much as anyone can relax in the face of a smile like that. (Seriously. Sam should sell toothpaste with a smile like that. With the face and the body that goes with it… the guy could pretty much sell anything.)
Chuck nearly stumbles, fumbling a chair away from the table Sam is sitting at and sitting in it. Now he hopes his blush is a little less obvious in the library’s muted lighting than it would be in another locale.
“Hey. I was just… I hope you don’t mind- I just saw you over here and thought-”
“Huh? No. Of course. It’s good to see you.”
Chuck can’t help but smile back. “Really?”
“Sure. I mean, we lugged two pounds of salt all over campus together. We’re hardly strangers, right?” Sam’s eyes are as warm as his grin.
“Yeah… I guess not.” If it’s possible to be glad that a homicidal dead person once fixated on killing him… Chuck believes he is. In every way except the one that considers why the homicidal dead person wanted Chuck - well - dead also.
“To be honest,” Chuck says, “I’m just happy you weren’t like ‘hey… whoever you are’. Ever since the cemetery last night, I’ve wondered if I made the whole thing up.”
“Right. Unfortunately… it was real. Sorry, Chuck.” Sam has a way of saying things. It’s not just the face, or the way he occasionally brushes his hair back from it - kind of a gentle gesture from a guy so tall and broad-shouldered that you don’t expect gentle. It’s not just how pretty his eyes are. Sam doesn’t know what it is, but Sam has a way of saying things that makes you want to believe him. It played havoc on Chuck’s mind back when he thought Sam was crazy. It’s a little bit creepy - how persuasive Sam is, when it isn’t incredibly hot.
Right now, Sam says ‘sorry’ like he feels personally responsible for dragging Chuck out of the dark and into realizing that the world is really full of the things of scary stories. The way Chuck sees it, a ghost named Kevin Parkinson drug Chuck out of his happy little world and into the real one; Sam is just the reason Chuck’s lasted more than five minutes alive in it.
“Nah, it’s alright. Who gets to say they spent a weekend fighting a ghost, huh? Well, I mean, besides… you know, you. And your whole… family. Of hunters.”
Sam laughs.
Chuck is getting ramble-y and fidgety and he knows that. It’s only partly because of Sam. Chuck isn’t entirely unused to having a nice, funny, hot guy smile and laugh with him. Chuck’s roommate is another one of those people, like Sam, who look like someone took an already above average-looking person and digitally enhanced him into looking even better. Bryce is one of Chuck’s closest friends. But Bryce’s smiles never seem to carry the little bit of return interest that Sam’s seem to, and to be honest - that’s sorta freaking Chuck out.
It’s not the main part of why Chuck is fidgety, however.
“And we got the ghost before he could kill anybody else. But-”
Sam’s face sobers a bit and Chuck wonders if he can see where Chuck is going with this. Sam seems to know everything there is to know about ghosts, about how they behave - surely he’s thought of this too.
“But… I don’t think he would have killed anybody if it wasn’t for me,” Chuck finally spits out.
Sam looks surprised. Thought maybe not as surprised at what Chuck’s said as at the fact that Chuck’s said it? He leans forward at the table and lowers his voice. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…” Chuck takes Sam’s cue and scoots further into the table so they can talk more quietly. “I mean I’ve been thinking about it. Why did he always come after me?” Sam opens his mouth, but Chuck continues, wanting to say his whole piece before he can chicken out. He doesn’t want to think that some guy came back from the dead just to get to him, personally. But the evidence… “Yeah, I know, he got that other poor guy outside the sandwich shop, but he only ever showed up there when I did, right? And that time outside my dorm? And in the cemetery, why did he come after me? You were the one setting his corpse on fire… but he walked all the way around you to attack me-”
“Chuck-”
“I mean tell me I’m being paranoid here,” Chuck says, with a nervous chuckle, almost serious.
Sam looks at him. For a long moment. “You’re not being paranoid, Chuck. I think he was after you.”
“Oh God.” Chuck rubs his face with both hands. This is what he’d been afraid of. He feels Sam’s hand on his arm and uncovers his eyes.
“Chuck… I need to show you something.”
Chuck’s dorm-room décor is pretty much identical to the décor of his bedroom back home. So he’s used to it - he doesn’t really think about it anymore.
Possibly… that’s why he spends so many nights here alone, or with Bryce, or alone and wishing he was with Bryce-
“Uh… yeah, I’m a bit of a geek,” he says, before he can suffer the humiliation of having Sam not say it.
He knows his face is burning. But the humor in Sam’s eyes as he looks around them isn’t derisive when he turns those eyes to Chuck.
“What, because you think Carrie Fischer looked totally hot in that bikini? Nah, it’s cool. I’m kinda a movie buff, too.”
“Yeah?”
Chuck doubts that Sam is the same kind of “movie buff” that Chuck is. The kind that sits through multiple late-night showings of old, sometimes obscure cult classics and wallpapers his dorm room with old movie posters. The kind that special orders a true-to-scale replica of the Millenium Falcon and hangs it over his dorm bed.
Speaking of that bed… Sam sits down on it and looks up at the replica.
“Yeah, my older brother - Dean - used to sneak us into the movies when we were kids. This one time we watched all three Star Wars movies back-to back. Twice.”
Chuck smiles. “Sounds like you have an awesome big brother.”
Sam laughs. “Actually, he spent most of the time we were there making out with some girl in the back row, but yeah. Dean’s- Well. Dean.”
Chuck isn’t entirely sure what Sam means by that, and he knows they should be talking about a homicidal spirit right now - but the part of him that just wants to hide under his sheets and pretend that the whole angry ghost thing was a figment of his imagination can’t resist an opportunity to both delay more ghost talk and learn more about the mysterious ghost-busting-law-student Sam Winchester.
Also, if Chuck keeps talking he can maybe stop thinking about the fact that he’s got Sam Winchester in his bed (in a manner of speaking) and actually sit down on it (instead of standing near it, debating what to do, like an oversized girl).
“You- Are you and your brother close?”
“Uh, not so much anymore,” Sam says, and there’s something sad about the way he says it - like there was in the way he said his brother’s name. “But we were. Our mom died when I was a baby and Dad- Well. Let’s just say Dean pretty much raised me. He’s really the only family I had.”
Chuck doesn’t touch the past tense in that last sentence. Instead he shakes his head. “Huh. You know, that sounds kinda like me and Ellie, my big sister. She pretty much raised me too.” Who’d have thought that he and Sam would have so much in common? A love of Star Wars… Similar childhoods… well, besides the fact that Sam spent his childhood hunting monsters and Chuck spent his playing video games with his best friend Morgan.
And the fact that Sam brought up Carrie Fischer’s bikini in Chuck’s Return of the JedI poster. Chuck’s eyes always head first to Harrison Ford and that open-fronted shirt.
Chuck sighs and rubs a hand over his face. He still hasn’t called Ellie - or Morgan. One or the both of them are probably planning a trip to Stanford right now, freaking out because he hasn’t checked in yet.
“Ellie would totally freak out if she knew about all of this,” Chuck says, sharing his thoughts aloud.
“Speaking of which…” Sam says, and reaches for something in his back pocket. It’s a folded up sheet of stiff paper that Chuck sees, when Sam unfolds it, is actually an 8x10 photograph.
Sam passes it over to him and Chuck takes it, barely feeling his fingertips as he sees what the photograph is of. Or, specifically, who.
“This is-”
“A photo of you.” Sam looked different - as they researched and defeated their ghost - than he did earlier in the library and even a moment ago, talking about movies and his brother. Chuck guesses that look - this look - is how Sam looks when he’s in work mode. Bryce is always saying that Chuck looks a thousand miles away when he’s in his. Sam looks eerily focused. “Can you tell when it was taken?”
“No. Yes? Maybe - I don’t know. This-” Chuck points to a girl in the photo, walking a few steps behind him. “This is Jess Moore. She sat beside me in my Poly Sci course. Sam, this had to have been taken months ago. Where did you get this?”
Sam’s lips thin. “Kevin Parkinson,” he says.
Chuck blinks. “Kevin- As in the ghost we just ganked Kevin Parkinson?” Chuck asks, using air quotes to surround the word Sam uses the most.
“Yeah, that Kevin,” Sam confirms. “I checked out his place after we found out who he was. I couldn’t find anything linking him to the sandwich shop or even the campus. Remember I told you he wasn’t even a student?”
Chuck nods.
“But as it turns out,” Sam continues, pointing to the photo, “There was one thing Parkinson was linked to.”
“Me,” Chuck says softly, feeling a chill crawl up his spine. He knew the ghost was after him. But having figured that out himself, through deduction, and hearing Sam say it - and provide photographic evidence of it - are two different things. Chuck stands, fear-induced adrenaline needling him into motion. “But why did he have a picture of me lying around his apartment?”
Sam sighs. “I don’t know. But whatever this guy had against you, I don’t think it started when he died.”
Chuck doesn’t know whether to laugh or to cry - this is crazy. He settles for running shaky fingers through his hair and trying to swallow down the manic giggle bubbling up in his chest.
“That doesn’t make any sense! I didn’t even know this guy! Why would he take a picture of me while he was alive? And, while we’re at it, why would he try to kill me once he was dead?”
Chuck takes deep breathes and forces himself to stop pacing. He stands in front of Sam and hands him back the photograph. Sam’s sympathetic eyes remind him that, if he’s going to melt down over everything - not that he wouldn’t be perfectly justified in doing so - he’d rather not do it in front of a super hot guy who is probably totally calm about dead people routinely trying to kill him.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this before?” he has to ask.
“To be honest?” Sam says, looking a little sheepish. “I didn’t know how you’d take it. I was just going to deal with it myself. Not everybody takes finding out about… stuff like this… as well as you have.”
Now Chuck has to laugh. “Yeah. Cause I’m doing so well.”
“No. No, really, you are.” Sam leans forward elbows on his knees. It’s the oddest time for Chuck to notice how close he’s standing to Sam. Mid-freakout he probably shouldn’t be as aware of how nicely Sam’s muscles stretch the long-sleeved t-shirt he’s wearing or that Sam’s wearing a different cologne today than he was the night they hid in that supply closet. “Most people? They find out something like this and they just- They run the other way. They hide from the truth; they don’t want to think about it.”
“Well. Thinking’s not something I really know how not to do. I usually overthink things.”
“What are you thinking right now, Chuck?” Sam asks.
There are any number of intelligent things Chuck could say to that. He’s frantic - with worry and exhaustion (from worrying) - and he’s distracted by Sam’s general… Samness. So instead he says, entirely too sincere to play off as meaning anything but what it does: “I’m really glad you’re here with me.”
Then he comes to his senses. He feels a bit like he did when the ghost flickered back into existence on top of him. Sam is smiling.
“Uh, I mean… I’m really glad you’re here with me… on this. Working on this. That I’m not alone. I-”
“Chuck. I know what you mean.”
“You… do?”
Chuck doesn’t think so. He doesn’t think that a huge, hot guy with an appreciation of Carrie Fischer’s Return of the JedI bikini (splendid though it might be) would smile like… like that if he knew what Chuck has been thinking pretty much since he looked up from a dead body with a hole punched through it’s chest and noticed those little gold specks in the brown of Sam’s eyes.
Sam takes Chuck by the hips and pulls him closer and Chuck muses, dazedly, that he supposes he should think again.
“Can I tell you something, Chuck?”
“S- Sure.”
“I’ve always been more of a Luke fan myself.”
“Oh.”
Then Sam is leaning up as Chuck is leaning down, and one of Sam’s hands wraps around the nape of Chuck’s neck, holding him into the kiss.
Sam’s mouth is firm, and demanding, and when Chuck pulls back - comes up for air, really - he is dizzy.
“This alright, Chuck?” Sam asks against Chuck’s parted lips.
“I- I think I’m having trouble standing.”
Sam laughs.
He pulls back and looks Chuck in the eyes. He’s got both hands on Chuck now - one playing with the curls at the nape of Chuck’s neck; one cupping Chuck’s jaw. “Standing’s overrated,” he says.
And he pulls Chuck down on the bed with him, lying back so that their bodies line up just as he crashes his lips back into Chuck’s.
Then he flips them, startling a frankly embarrassing little yelp out of Chuck that makes Sam chuckle.
Chuck smiles, despite his blush.
“Yeah, yeah. You laugh now. But I’m pretty sure there are only so many girly screams a guy is allowed to have in front of another guy, and I was kinda saving mine for the next cemetery and/or haunted cafeteria experience.”
Sam nips at Chuck’s bottom lip. Sweet Jesus, Chuck thinks, as pretty much his entire body reacts to the feel of Sam‘s teeth.
“Well. I guess I’ll just have to be extra careful not to startle you,” Sam says. “So… consider this a warning.”
“A warning of wh-”
Sam slides his hands up from Chuck’s hips and to his waist, rucking up Chuck’s t-shirt as he does. His hands rest there, warm and calloused against Chuck’s skin. His mouth settles over Chuck’s mouth and his tongue licks at Chuck’s lips until they part before sweeping past Chuck’s teeth.
Sam hasn’t answered Chuck’s question, but at this point Chuck is relatively sure that whatever Sam has planned - Chuck’s answer is yes. An emphatic, emphatic yes.
When Sam stiffens and begins to draw back, Chuck’s little noise of protest as he arches into Sam, trying to maintain the kiss, says so.
But then Chuck realizes why Sam is withdrawing.
Chuck looks to the doorway of the dormroom, and the figure standing inside it, clearing his throat.
If Sam weren’t lying on top of him, Chuck is pretty certain he’d jump out of his skin.
“Uh… hi, Bryce.”
Speaking of questions? Chuck doesn’t think he’s ever seen so many in Bryce’s expression.
“Chuck.”
Where’s a nice, distracting murderous ghost when a guy needs one, huh?
[end... for now]
Author: nevcolleil
Fandom(s): Chuck/Supernatural
Pairing: Chuck Bartowski/Sam Winchester
Rating: PG
Summary: Part 2: In which Chuck realizes that last week’s killer ghost was just the start of his problems, Sam realizes there is more to Charles Bartowski than meets the eye, and the author realizes that a make-out scene is probably a bit premature (but writes one anyway).
Part 1
As it turns out, committing a major felony alongside a guy can bring the two of you much closer.
A week ago Chuck had never spoken to the ginormously tall law student with the shaggy brown hair and the cute dimples he sees poring over a textbook at a table in the library just now. Then Sam had saved him from being an angry ghost’s punching bag. Next thing you know they were digging up a guy’s grave and torching his bones.
Now Chuck feels only a little bit awkward as he approaches Sam, wiping sweaty palms on the front of his jeans. Sam looks up.
It’s entirely possible that Chuck’s response to the circumstance of having faced and defeated a ghost with Sam is unique. Maybe the trauma of being forced to kill a supernatural being isn’t like the trauma of surviving a plane crash or being trapped in a caved-in mine - things you always hear about as bringing complete strangers together.
Maybe it wasn’t a traumatic experience in Sam’s perspective. He told Chuck that he grew up hunting scary things Chuck always thought were imaginary. Like some kids grew up in a family of doctors or lawyers… or computer engineers… Sam grew up in a family of hunters. Coming to Stanford and becoming a lawyer is Sam’s idea of “rebelling”. Perhaps a ghost-hunt isn’t Sam’s idea of a life-changing event?
Chuck hopes the worst-case scenario, in any case, is that Sam isn’t nearly as psyched to see Chuck at this moment as Chuck is to see Sam. He hopes the last week wasn’t just in his head - terrifying as it had been.
“Oh. Hey, Chuck,” Sam says with a smile.
Chuck relaxes - as much as anyone can relax in the face of a smile like that. (Seriously. Sam should sell toothpaste with a smile like that. With the face and the body that goes with it… the guy could pretty much sell anything.)
Chuck nearly stumbles, fumbling a chair away from the table Sam is sitting at and sitting in it. Now he hopes his blush is a little less obvious in the library’s muted lighting than it would be in another locale.
“Hey. I was just… I hope you don’t mind- I just saw you over here and thought-”
“Huh? No. Of course. It’s good to see you.”
Chuck can’t help but smile back. “Really?”
“Sure. I mean, we lugged two pounds of salt all over campus together. We’re hardly strangers, right?” Sam’s eyes are as warm as his grin.
“Yeah… I guess not.” If it’s possible to be glad that a homicidal dead person once fixated on killing him… Chuck believes he is. In every way except the one that considers why the homicidal dead person wanted Chuck - well - dead also.
“To be honest,” Chuck says, “I’m just happy you weren’t like ‘hey… whoever you are’. Ever since the cemetery last night, I’ve wondered if I made the whole thing up.”
“Right. Unfortunately… it was real. Sorry, Chuck.” Sam has a way of saying things. It’s not just the face, or the way he occasionally brushes his hair back from it - kind of a gentle gesture from a guy so tall and broad-shouldered that you don’t expect gentle. It’s not just how pretty his eyes are. Sam doesn’t know what it is, but Sam has a way of saying things that makes you want to believe him. It played havoc on Chuck’s mind back when he thought Sam was crazy. It’s a little bit creepy - how persuasive Sam is, when it isn’t incredibly hot.
Right now, Sam says ‘sorry’ like he feels personally responsible for dragging Chuck out of the dark and into realizing that the world is really full of the things of scary stories. The way Chuck sees it, a ghost named Kevin Parkinson drug Chuck out of his happy little world and into the real one; Sam is just the reason Chuck’s lasted more than five minutes alive in it.
“Nah, it’s alright. Who gets to say they spent a weekend fighting a ghost, huh? Well, I mean, besides… you know, you. And your whole… family. Of hunters.”
Sam laughs.
Chuck is getting ramble-y and fidgety and he knows that. It’s only partly because of Sam. Chuck isn’t entirely unused to having a nice, funny, hot guy smile and laugh with him. Chuck’s roommate is another one of those people, like Sam, who look like someone took an already above average-looking person and digitally enhanced him into looking even better. Bryce is one of Chuck’s closest friends. But Bryce’s smiles never seem to carry the little bit of return interest that Sam’s seem to, and to be honest - that’s sorta freaking Chuck out.
It’s not the main part of why Chuck is fidgety, however.
“And we got the ghost before he could kill anybody else. But-”
Sam’s face sobers a bit and Chuck wonders if he can see where Chuck is going with this. Sam seems to know everything there is to know about ghosts, about how they behave - surely he’s thought of this too.
“But… I don’t think he would have killed anybody if it wasn’t for me,” Chuck finally spits out.
Sam looks surprised. Thought maybe not as surprised at what Chuck’s said as at the fact that Chuck’s said it? He leans forward at the table and lowers his voice. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…” Chuck takes Sam’s cue and scoots further into the table so they can talk more quietly. “I mean I’ve been thinking about it. Why did he always come after me?” Sam opens his mouth, but Chuck continues, wanting to say his whole piece before he can chicken out. He doesn’t want to think that some guy came back from the dead just to get to him, personally. But the evidence… “Yeah, I know, he got that other poor guy outside the sandwich shop, but he only ever showed up there when I did, right? And that time outside my dorm? And in the cemetery, why did he come after me? You were the one setting his corpse on fire… but he walked all the way around you to attack me-”
“Chuck-”
“I mean tell me I’m being paranoid here,” Chuck says, with a nervous chuckle, almost serious.
Sam looks at him. For a long moment. “You’re not being paranoid, Chuck. I think he was after you.”
“Oh God.” Chuck rubs his face with both hands. This is what he’d been afraid of. He feels Sam’s hand on his arm and uncovers his eyes.
“Chuck… I need to show you something.”
Chuck’s dorm-room décor is pretty much identical to the décor of his bedroom back home. So he’s used to it - he doesn’t really think about it anymore.
Possibly… that’s why he spends so many nights here alone, or with Bryce, or alone and wishing he was with Bryce-
“Uh… yeah, I’m a bit of a geek,” he says, before he can suffer the humiliation of having Sam not say it.
He knows his face is burning. But the humor in Sam’s eyes as he looks around them isn’t derisive when he turns those eyes to Chuck.
“What, because you think Carrie Fischer looked totally hot in that bikini? Nah, it’s cool. I’m kinda a movie buff, too.”
“Yeah?”
Chuck doubts that Sam is the same kind of “movie buff” that Chuck is. The kind that sits through multiple late-night showings of old, sometimes obscure cult classics and wallpapers his dorm room with old movie posters. The kind that special orders a true-to-scale replica of the Millenium Falcon and hangs it over his dorm bed.
Speaking of that bed… Sam sits down on it and looks up at the replica.
“Yeah, my older brother - Dean - used to sneak us into the movies when we were kids. This one time we watched all three Star Wars movies back-to back. Twice.”
Chuck smiles. “Sounds like you have an awesome big brother.”
Sam laughs. “Actually, he spent most of the time we were there making out with some girl in the back row, but yeah. Dean’s- Well. Dean.”
Chuck isn’t entirely sure what Sam means by that, and he knows they should be talking about a homicidal spirit right now - but the part of him that just wants to hide under his sheets and pretend that the whole angry ghost thing was a figment of his imagination can’t resist an opportunity to both delay more ghost talk and learn more about the mysterious ghost-busting-law-student Sam Winchester.
Also, if Chuck keeps talking he can maybe stop thinking about the fact that he’s got Sam Winchester in his bed (in a manner of speaking) and actually sit down on it (instead of standing near it, debating what to do, like an oversized girl).
“You- Are you and your brother close?”
“Uh, not so much anymore,” Sam says, and there’s something sad about the way he says it - like there was in the way he said his brother’s name. “But we were. Our mom died when I was a baby and Dad- Well. Let’s just say Dean pretty much raised me. He’s really the only family I had.”
Chuck doesn’t touch the past tense in that last sentence. Instead he shakes his head. “Huh. You know, that sounds kinda like me and Ellie, my big sister. She pretty much raised me too.” Who’d have thought that he and Sam would have so much in common? A love of Star Wars… Similar childhoods… well, besides the fact that Sam spent his childhood hunting monsters and Chuck spent his playing video games with his best friend Morgan.
And the fact that Sam brought up Carrie Fischer’s bikini in Chuck’s Return of the JedI poster. Chuck’s eyes always head first to Harrison Ford and that open-fronted shirt.
Chuck sighs and rubs a hand over his face. He still hasn’t called Ellie - or Morgan. One or the both of them are probably planning a trip to Stanford right now, freaking out because he hasn’t checked in yet.
“Ellie would totally freak out if she knew about all of this,” Chuck says, sharing his thoughts aloud.
“Speaking of which…” Sam says, and reaches for something in his back pocket. It’s a folded up sheet of stiff paper that Chuck sees, when Sam unfolds it, is actually an 8x10 photograph.
Sam passes it over to him and Chuck takes it, barely feeling his fingertips as he sees what the photograph is of. Or, specifically, who.
“This is-”
“A photo of you.” Sam looked different - as they researched and defeated their ghost - than he did earlier in the library and even a moment ago, talking about movies and his brother. Chuck guesses that look - this look - is how Sam looks when he’s in work mode. Bryce is always saying that Chuck looks a thousand miles away when he’s in his. Sam looks eerily focused. “Can you tell when it was taken?”
“No. Yes? Maybe - I don’t know. This-” Chuck points to a girl in the photo, walking a few steps behind him. “This is Jess Moore. She sat beside me in my Poly Sci course. Sam, this had to have been taken months ago. Where did you get this?”
Sam’s lips thin. “Kevin Parkinson,” he says.
Chuck blinks. “Kevin- As in the ghost we just ganked Kevin Parkinson?” Chuck asks, using air quotes to surround the word Sam uses the most.
“Yeah, that Kevin,” Sam confirms. “I checked out his place after we found out who he was. I couldn’t find anything linking him to the sandwich shop or even the campus. Remember I told you he wasn’t even a student?”
Chuck nods.
“But as it turns out,” Sam continues, pointing to the photo, “There was one thing Parkinson was linked to.”
“Me,” Chuck says softly, feeling a chill crawl up his spine. He knew the ghost was after him. But having figured that out himself, through deduction, and hearing Sam say it - and provide photographic evidence of it - are two different things. Chuck stands, fear-induced adrenaline needling him into motion. “But why did he have a picture of me lying around his apartment?”
Sam sighs. “I don’t know. But whatever this guy had against you, I don’t think it started when he died.”
Chuck doesn’t know whether to laugh or to cry - this is crazy. He settles for running shaky fingers through his hair and trying to swallow down the manic giggle bubbling up in his chest.
“That doesn’t make any sense! I didn’t even know this guy! Why would he take a picture of me while he was alive? And, while we’re at it, why would he try to kill me once he was dead?”
Chuck takes deep breathes and forces himself to stop pacing. He stands in front of Sam and hands him back the photograph. Sam’s sympathetic eyes remind him that, if he’s going to melt down over everything - not that he wouldn’t be perfectly justified in doing so - he’d rather not do it in front of a super hot guy who is probably totally calm about dead people routinely trying to kill him.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this before?” he has to ask.
“To be honest?” Sam says, looking a little sheepish. “I didn’t know how you’d take it. I was just going to deal with it myself. Not everybody takes finding out about… stuff like this… as well as you have.”
Now Chuck has to laugh. “Yeah. Cause I’m doing so well.”
“No. No, really, you are.” Sam leans forward elbows on his knees. It’s the oddest time for Chuck to notice how close he’s standing to Sam. Mid-freakout he probably shouldn’t be as aware of how nicely Sam’s muscles stretch the long-sleeved t-shirt he’s wearing or that Sam’s wearing a different cologne today than he was the night they hid in that supply closet. “Most people? They find out something like this and they just- They run the other way. They hide from the truth; they don’t want to think about it.”
“Well. Thinking’s not something I really know how not to do. I usually overthink things.”
“What are you thinking right now, Chuck?” Sam asks.
There are any number of intelligent things Chuck could say to that. He’s frantic - with worry and exhaustion (from worrying) - and he’s distracted by Sam’s general… Samness. So instead he says, entirely too sincere to play off as meaning anything but what it does: “I’m really glad you’re here with me.”
Then he comes to his senses. He feels a bit like he did when the ghost flickered back into existence on top of him. Sam is smiling.
“Uh, I mean… I’m really glad you’re here with me… on this. Working on this. That I’m not alone. I-”
“Chuck. I know what you mean.”
“You… do?”
Chuck doesn’t think so. He doesn’t think that a huge, hot guy with an appreciation of Carrie Fischer’s Return of the JedI bikini (splendid though it might be) would smile like… like that if he knew what Chuck has been thinking pretty much since he looked up from a dead body with a hole punched through it’s chest and noticed those little gold specks in the brown of Sam’s eyes.
Sam takes Chuck by the hips and pulls him closer and Chuck muses, dazedly, that he supposes he should think again.
“Can I tell you something, Chuck?”
“S- Sure.”
“I’ve always been more of a Luke fan myself.”
“Oh.”
Then Sam is leaning up as Chuck is leaning down, and one of Sam’s hands wraps around the nape of Chuck’s neck, holding him into the kiss.
Sam’s mouth is firm, and demanding, and when Chuck pulls back - comes up for air, really - he is dizzy.
“This alright, Chuck?” Sam asks against Chuck’s parted lips.
“I- I think I’m having trouble standing.”
Sam laughs.
He pulls back and looks Chuck in the eyes. He’s got both hands on Chuck now - one playing with the curls at the nape of Chuck’s neck; one cupping Chuck’s jaw. “Standing’s overrated,” he says.
And he pulls Chuck down on the bed with him, lying back so that their bodies line up just as he crashes his lips back into Chuck’s.
Then he flips them, startling a frankly embarrassing little yelp out of Chuck that makes Sam chuckle.
Chuck smiles, despite his blush.
“Yeah, yeah. You laugh now. But I’m pretty sure there are only so many girly screams a guy is allowed to have in front of another guy, and I was kinda saving mine for the next cemetery and/or haunted cafeteria experience.”
Sam nips at Chuck’s bottom lip. Sweet Jesus, Chuck thinks, as pretty much his entire body reacts to the feel of Sam‘s teeth.
“Well. I guess I’ll just have to be extra careful not to startle you,” Sam says. “So… consider this a warning.”
“A warning of wh-”
Sam slides his hands up from Chuck’s hips and to his waist, rucking up Chuck’s t-shirt as he does. His hands rest there, warm and calloused against Chuck’s skin. His mouth settles over Chuck’s mouth and his tongue licks at Chuck’s lips until they part before sweeping past Chuck’s teeth.
Sam hasn’t answered Chuck’s question, but at this point Chuck is relatively sure that whatever Sam has planned - Chuck’s answer is yes. An emphatic, emphatic yes.
When Sam stiffens and begins to draw back, Chuck’s little noise of protest as he arches into Sam, trying to maintain the kiss, says so.
But then Chuck realizes why Sam is withdrawing.
Chuck looks to the doorway of the dormroom, and the figure standing inside it, clearing his throat.
If Sam weren’t lying on top of him, Chuck is pretty certain he’d jump out of his skin.
“Uh… hi, Bryce.”
Speaking of questions? Chuck doesn’t think he’s ever seen so many in Bryce’s expression.
“Chuck.”
Where’s a nice, distracting murderous ghost when a guy needs one, huh?
[end... for now]