Fic: Chuck vs. the Re-Seduction (Chuck/Sarah/Casey, PG-13) 1/2
Title: chuck vs. the re-seduction
Author: nevcolleil
Fandom(s): Chuck
Pairing: Chuck/Sarah/Casey
Rating: PG-13
Summary: For a prompt at chuck_anonkink. Set in Season 4 after Chuck vs. the A-Team. The reason Chuck and Sarah are so broken up about Casey’s new team? Is that they’d finally gotten Casey to join them in the bedroom right before Casey started to withdraw from them both. Together, they pull out all the stops to seduce Casey… again. This time into more than just a night.
AO3
Chuck’s pretty sure he would be devastated even if Casey had only been a partner and a friend before he traded Chuck and Sarah in for newer models - he’s worked with the guy for four years! They’ve gone all over the world together, fought side by side through some of the stickiest situations Chuck can imagine. Casey’s saved Chuck’s life countless times, and Chuck’s repaid the favor at least a time or two. Casey’s used to be the last voice in Chuck’s ear before he went to sleep at night, before Chuck’s training, when he was still under surveillance. Chuck used to be Casey’s top priority. And. Well. Maybe Chuck had gotten used to that. Used to Casey being Chuck‘s.
Chuck’s never thought of that as a bad thing. After all, he’s always thought of himself as Sarah’s and Casey’s. Apparently Casey hasn’t felt the same way.
But then, why did he-
Casey was Chuck’s partner and friend, but he was more than that, too, and this- This new “team” of Casey’s crushes Chuck. Not just because the Intersect is involved. Not just because Chuck has literally been replaced, in the most direct sense possible. But because…
If all Chuck and Sarah had been to Casey were partners… Why did he take them up on their invitation to their bedroom? Finally. After the years Chuck spent secretly crushing on the man… Then the year Chuck spent feeling simultaneously blessed and cursed because he’d gotten the woman of his dreams, but couldn’t stop wanting the man of his dreams as well; after all the uncertain, stumbling conversations with Sarah - then the miraculous realization that they’d both fallen in love with Casey as well as each other… Finally, it seemed like Chuck and Sarah were getting somewhere in drawing Casey into their loving twosome and making it the loving threesome that they’d decided they wanted to be.
Except, shortly after that night, Casey started drawing further away. Spending more time with Morgan. Going on his secret missions. Chuck and Sarah agreed that they should just give him his space; that he was probably kind of freaked out about what they’d done (although, who would have thought that Casey - Mr. Fearless, Seen-It-All Casey - would be the one to freak out among them?) And now, to think that they’d been wrong… That the night they had together hadn’t meant to Casey what Chuck and Sarah had assumed it meant, is heartbreaking.
When Chuck and Sarah trudge home after leaving Castle II, Chuck feels miserable - and guilty for feeling miserable - by turns. He shouldn’t feel as though the world is ending. He still has Sarah. Is it fair to her that he can’t even get excited about the prospect of going to bed, knowing that Casey is officially never going to join them in it again?
They lie beside one another in bed, silent, staring up at the ceiling, and Chuck is just about to say something to break the brutal quiet when Sarah huffs and tosses on her pillow to face him.
“Okay, this is ridiculous,” she says, in a tense voice.
Chuck feels horrible. He immediately begins to apologize, but Sarah continues before he can open his mouth.
“I’m not good at pretending. Not with you, you know that. And you know I love you - I’d feel the same way right now if it was you instead of Casey - but I’ve got to say this. I miss Casey, Chuck. I don’t want to just let him go.”
This is why Chuck could never not love this woman. Just when he thinks he’s all alone in something, there she is - right beside him.
“Right?” Chuck turns over too. “I feel the same way! God, Sarah, what do we do? He’s already-”
“I know.” Sarah looks grim. That isn’t a good sign. Chuck’s seen Sarah stare down death with a little glint in her eyes and a smile hiding behind her lips; sees it on more or less a daily basis. But she’s nowhere near smiling now. “He told me he thinks that we don’t need him. That he left the team because he figured we’d be just fine without him.”
“What? That’s crazy! We’re a team.”
“That’s what I told him! But I don’t think he believed me. Chuck- That night we-” Sarah hesitates. Chuck rubs a hand up and down her arm before slipping his arm around her waist - it’s so wrong to hear Sarah refer to That Night with something besides mischief and wonder and sex in her voice. “Do you think that was just Casey… saying goodbye?”
Chuck doesn’t know what to think. Most of the possibilities aren’t good. That could have been it. Casey could have just been taking advantage of (what Chuck and Sarah hadn’t realized would be) a one-time opportunity. Casey could have been giving them what he thought they wanted, knowing what was going to happen next.
‘Well, thank you but no thank you, Casey,‘ Chuck thinks.
They’re not going to let him get away with that. He gives them a little taste of what they’ve been wanting all this time, then he just up and says they’ll be “fine” without him?
Chuck refuses to see it as “goodbye”.
He chooses to see it as “come and get me”.
“We’re not gonna let him go, Sarah. We’re going to get him back.”
“How?”
Chuck has an idea. Slowly his frown smoothes and the corners of his lips rise. “Well… We do sorta know someone who specializes in telling people how to get a lover to come back to them.”
“Who- Roan?”
It’s worth a shot. Casey should be familiar with Roan’s methods. He took the man’s training three times. He’s less likely to mistake the Roan school of seduction techniques for something less sexual (Chuck was rather embarrassed to realize, the last time, that Casey had mistaken many of Chuck’s attempts to seduce him as… well. Chuck not actually trying to be seductive.) Or something shady (When Sarah first started seriously pursuing Casey, he thought Chuck wasn’t aware of what Sarah was doing and didn’t react well to Sarah’s attempt to “cheat” on Chuck with him.)
“It’s worth a shot,” Chuck says aloud.
“Do you think he’ll even help us?” Sarah asks. It’s a valid question. How many spy couples have actually called Roan and asked how they might seduce a third spy into joining them in the bedroom?
“If he won’t, we’ll just have to figure things out for ourselves. I mean… we’ve done it once already, right?” Chuck certainly hopes he sounds more confident than he feels.
“Right…”
And thus Operation Seduce Colonel Casey begins.
___
It isn’t an easy call to make.
On one hand, they’re super secret world-class spies. They disarm bombs and take down oppressive foreign regimes and fight bad guys 365 days a year. They should be able to look a colleague in the eyes and say, ‘I want to be with the man who is my partner. No. Not the one I married. The other one.‘ or ‘I want another man to fuck my incredibly sexy wife… And me.‘
They rescued Roan Montgomery from drowning in martinis and his own self-pity - they should be able to say anything to him.
But. Yeah. It’s still hard.
Roan blinks. He looks from one of them to the other. And back again. “Pardon me?”
It isn’t a great start.
Chuck and Sarah exchange a glance. They’re sitting on their couch together, holding hands, talking to Roan through the video comm system hooked up to their flatscreen. They dressed up to make this call. Nothing too flashy, but something more appropriate by Roan standards than their usual casual dress. Sarah’s wearing a slinky black dress and Chuck’s wearing a silk shirt.
Roan looks at them like they’re wearing clown costumes or something.
Chuck is probably blushing. Thank god for Sarah - her chin juts up just that tiny bit that says she’s locked in on doing something, and she doesn’t even blink as she says, “You heard us. I know this is an… unusual request-”
“Not exactly unusual, as far as the setup goes,” Roan corrects her. “You’d be surprised how often spy teams who work together… play together. Honestly, I’m surprised you haven’t all started your own round of musical beds long before now.”
Chuck and Sarah do not look at each other at that. The only thing worse than having to ask another man what they should do to get their man, is telling him that they’ve already tried things their way… And it didn’t stick.
“But the target…” Roan shakes his head.
Chuck stiffens, and he can feel Sarah doing the same beside him. “What about the targ- What about Casey?” Chuck asks.
For the first time, Roan smiles - perhaps at the defensiveness in Chuck’s tone; maybe because of the dangerous way Sarah is looking at him.
“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” he explains, “I’m well aware of Colonel Casey’s appeal to members of both his own and the opposite sex. On only one of the three occasions that Mr. Casey failed my program did he do so because he simply refused to use the prescribed methods. In his first attempt, I believe his partner found concentration increasingly difficult as she and the Colonel worked their way through our exercises in seduction and extraction.”
Chuck and Sarah visibly relax. Chuck even feels a smile tugging at his own lips, imagining the all-too-believable scenario of Casey’s Seduction Training partner becoming too distracted by a chiseled jaw and broad shoulders to perform properly and Casey becoming confused and irritated by her lack of concentration.
“However,” Roan cautions them, “John stopped using the methods I taught not because they were ineffective, but because he had no patience for the subtle art of seduction. You’ve seen for yourself, no doubt on several occasions - most certainly in Morocco - that the Colonel would much rather shoot his way through an obstacle than gently ease it aside. A man with that mindset makes for a remarkably challenging target for seduction.”
“Are you saying that your methods can’t work on a man like Casey?” Sarah asks. Chuck does smile at the pride in her voice. The whole point of this call is that they need to know how to seduce Casey - and for that, he needs to be seducible. But it’s with some affection that Chuck considers the possibility that Casey may be above susceptibility to Roan’s tactics. He is Casey, after all. Impervious to many things the mere man is generally susceptible to.
“Oh, not at all, Agent Walker,” Roan replies quickly. He has his pride as well. “Only that seducing Mr. Casey may take a level of commitment and a degree of… creativity that the standard mark does not.”
“We’re committed,” Chuck says immediately. This isn’t about some… fun romp they’re planning to spice up their sex-life. This is about getting back the third member of what they should have always realized is a three-man team - in and out of the bedroom and Castle. And about making it absolutely clear this time that what they want is the latter, not the former. “We can be creative. We’ll do whatever it takes. Please, Roan… Help us make this happen.”
“Very well. I can’t say no to you crazy kids.” Roan grins. “Just make sure you mention this to Diane if it all works out. I’m afraid I’m in the doghouse again for that thing in Jacarta.”
Chuck looks at Sarah and sees her looking back, struggling to keep a straight face. They haven’t heard about “that thing in Jacarta”. Thinking about General Beckman and sex feels kind of like thinking about their parents’ sex lives, and they’re more than happy keeping that topic of conversation off the table between them and ‘Diane’. But if it helps…
“Uh… Sure. We will,” Sarah promises.
“Excellent. Alright then, First thing’s first…”
Ten minutes in, Chuck decides they ought to take notes.
___
A lasting seduction, Roan tells Chuck and Sarah - citing material from his advanced courses (Seduction Under Critical Circumstances and Seduction for Deep Cover Operations) - is less like an air strike and more like a three-pronged attack. You don’t just pick an angle and bomb your target from it; you come at the target from every angle - land, sea, air.
Or, in the case of seduction: audio, visual, tactile. (In other words: sound, sight, touch). If you’re really desperate, you can throw in smell, too, Roan adds. And Chuck and Sarah sorta are, so Chuck tries. He starts wearing a cologne; something strong and earthy, like he thinks Casey might like. Sarah goes nuts over it, but Casey… Not so much.
“What’s that?” Casey asks, wrinkling up his nose.
The two of them are in the van, surveilling. Chuck’s begun Phase One of his visual attack on Casey’s resistance - he’s wearing a tailored, light blue shirt Sarah said would make Casey want to pop buttons and fitted black pants that even Chuck thinks makes his thighs and ass look good.
“That? What ’that’?”
“That that, you moron,” Casey snaps, gesturing impatiently at Chuck’s neck. “That smell. What is it?”
“Oh. That.” Chuck’s heart sinks at the shuttered expression on Casey’s face. On the one hand, Casey did notice the cologne. Which is a good thing. On the other hand, he doesn’t look seduced by it. A little siren goes off in Chuck’s head: ‘Abort mission! Abort mission!‘
But it’s going to take more than a scowl and one poor choice in toiletries to make Chuck do that.
“Uh… cologne. Why? You don’t like it?” Chuck tries (tries tries tries) not to sound too interested in Casey’s answer.
Casey’s watching the surveillance footage being fed into the van. “It’s alright,” he says neutrally. Then he smirks and turns. “Playing tricks to keep Walker interested already? Thought the honeymoon would last a little longer than that for you two, Bartowski.”
Chuck doesn’t know what Casey thinks about when he teases Chuck and Sarah about their relationship. Is he remembering the “honeymoon” the three of them had in Chuck and Sarah’s bedroom? Does he wonder if Chuck and Sarah ever think about including him again? Could he really not know how much they’ve missed him since then?
‘I’m not wearing it to keep Sarah,’ Chuck thinks, but says: “The honeymoon is lasting just fine.”
The last word tastes wrong after what Sarah told him about Casey thinking she and Chuck would be just “fine” without him.
So Chuck leans closer and adds, in a softer voice, “We’ve just been a little lone-”
“Peralez is on the move,” Casey says suddenly, in his ‘target acquired’ voice. Sure enough, on the surveillance screen Chuck can see that the man they’ve been surveilling is leaving his office building and walking towards his car.
The members of terrorist sleeper cells have terrible timing.
“You’ll just have to tell me why Walker’s got you spritzing yourself with girly spray later.”
“I’m not- Yeah, right. Later.” There’s not much else Chuck can say with Casey climbing into the driver’s seat of the van. He checks the cartridges of his tranq guns and secures their equipment in case Casey has to speed up to stay with Peralez.
Chuck’s pretty sure they can cross SEDUCE CASEY BY SMELLING REALLY SEXY off of his and Sarah’s list of possible angles of attack.
He hopes Sarah has better luck with Phase One of her visual assault. Surely she can work a cat suit to greater success than Chuck can work a new cologne.
___
The cat suit is a bust. Casey does a double take as he walks into Castle and sees Sarah in all that skin-tight black leather (which is promising and makes both Sarah and Chuck grin in anticipated triumph) but things go downhill from there.
Bentley takes an interest in their mission, infiltrating a smuggling ring outside of Barstow. (That or she’s still pissed at them for disbanding her Gretas, and she just wants to hang around, being a nuisance.) She takes one look at Sarah’s get-up and immediately starts questioning the wisdom of wearing stiletto pumps into a potential combat scenario. She spends the entire night throwing Sarah snide glances and laughs out loud when Sarah does, eventually, break a heel.
Sarah uses that heel to stab a Chechnyan smuggler in the neck, so the laughter stops, but still. It never does a girl’s pride good to have her stiletto heels laughed at.
Casey is awkward and quiet the whole time. Perhaps he’s uncomfortable being around both his new boss and his old team. (Or is that his old boss and his new team… who were his old team when his old boss had a team… Whatever.) Perhaps, like Chuck, he’s just fighting the urge to throw Sarah up against the nearest flat surface and do incredibly unprofessional things to her.
That second thing would be great, as far as Chuck and Sarah are concerned, but Casey disappears as soon as they all get back to Castle. Chuck and Sarah go to store the team’s weapons in one of the more rarely used weapons lockers (because Chuck can’t wait til they get home to explore the flat-surface/unprofessional-things idea) and Casey walks in on them while Chuck’s face is buried in Sarah’s naked breasts. Sarah’s still-leather clad legs are wrapped around Chuck’s now naked waist, and the both of them are too caught up in what they’re doing, when Casey suddenly appears in the locker, to disentangle and get their hands on him fast enough to prevent him from leaving.
“For god’s sake, Bartowski, Walker. Get a room.”
“John, we-”
“Another room,” Casey growls and stomps out.
It’s disheartening. Chuck and Sarah still have sex (because Chuck’s still wearing those damned pants, and that cologne, and Sarah wore a cat suit - they’re both incredibly turned on) and it’s still awesome.
But it’s sad, too.
They’ve got to step up their efforts.
[tbc]
Author: nevcolleil
Fandom(s): Chuck
Pairing: Chuck/Sarah/Casey
Rating: PG-13
Summary: For a prompt at chuck_anonkink. Set in Season 4 after Chuck vs. the A-Team. The reason Chuck and Sarah are so broken up about Casey’s new team? Is that they’d finally gotten Casey to join them in the bedroom right before Casey started to withdraw from them both. Together, they pull out all the stops to seduce Casey… again. This time into more than just a night.
AO3
Chuck’s pretty sure he would be devastated even if Casey had only been a partner and a friend before he traded Chuck and Sarah in for newer models - he’s worked with the guy for four years! They’ve gone all over the world together, fought side by side through some of the stickiest situations Chuck can imagine. Casey’s saved Chuck’s life countless times, and Chuck’s repaid the favor at least a time or two. Casey’s used to be the last voice in Chuck’s ear before he went to sleep at night, before Chuck’s training, when he was still under surveillance. Chuck used to be Casey’s top priority. And. Well. Maybe Chuck had gotten used to that. Used to Casey being Chuck‘s.
Chuck’s never thought of that as a bad thing. After all, he’s always thought of himself as Sarah’s and Casey’s. Apparently Casey hasn’t felt the same way.
But then, why did he-
Casey was Chuck’s partner and friend, but he was more than that, too, and this- This new “team” of Casey’s crushes Chuck. Not just because the Intersect is involved. Not just because Chuck has literally been replaced, in the most direct sense possible. But because…
If all Chuck and Sarah had been to Casey were partners… Why did he take them up on their invitation to their bedroom? Finally. After the years Chuck spent secretly crushing on the man… Then the year Chuck spent feeling simultaneously blessed and cursed because he’d gotten the woman of his dreams, but couldn’t stop wanting the man of his dreams as well; after all the uncertain, stumbling conversations with Sarah - then the miraculous realization that they’d both fallen in love with Casey as well as each other… Finally, it seemed like Chuck and Sarah were getting somewhere in drawing Casey into their loving twosome and making it the loving threesome that they’d decided they wanted to be.
Except, shortly after that night, Casey started drawing further away. Spending more time with Morgan. Going on his secret missions. Chuck and Sarah agreed that they should just give him his space; that he was probably kind of freaked out about what they’d done (although, who would have thought that Casey - Mr. Fearless, Seen-It-All Casey - would be the one to freak out among them?) And now, to think that they’d been wrong… That the night they had together hadn’t meant to Casey what Chuck and Sarah had assumed it meant, is heartbreaking.
When Chuck and Sarah trudge home after leaving Castle II, Chuck feels miserable - and guilty for feeling miserable - by turns. He shouldn’t feel as though the world is ending. He still has Sarah. Is it fair to her that he can’t even get excited about the prospect of going to bed, knowing that Casey is officially never going to join them in it again?
They lie beside one another in bed, silent, staring up at the ceiling, and Chuck is just about to say something to break the brutal quiet when Sarah huffs and tosses on her pillow to face him.
“Okay, this is ridiculous,” she says, in a tense voice.
Chuck feels horrible. He immediately begins to apologize, but Sarah continues before he can open his mouth.
“I’m not good at pretending. Not with you, you know that. And you know I love you - I’d feel the same way right now if it was you instead of Casey - but I’ve got to say this. I miss Casey, Chuck. I don’t want to just let him go.”
This is why Chuck could never not love this woman. Just when he thinks he’s all alone in something, there she is - right beside him.
“Right?” Chuck turns over too. “I feel the same way! God, Sarah, what do we do? He’s already-”
“I know.” Sarah looks grim. That isn’t a good sign. Chuck’s seen Sarah stare down death with a little glint in her eyes and a smile hiding behind her lips; sees it on more or less a daily basis. But she’s nowhere near smiling now. “He told me he thinks that we don’t need him. That he left the team because he figured we’d be just fine without him.”
“What? That’s crazy! We’re a team.”
“That’s what I told him! But I don’t think he believed me. Chuck- That night we-” Sarah hesitates. Chuck rubs a hand up and down her arm before slipping his arm around her waist - it’s so wrong to hear Sarah refer to That Night with something besides mischief and wonder and sex in her voice. “Do you think that was just Casey… saying goodbye?”
Chuck doesn’t know what to think. Most of the possibilities aren’t good. That could have been it. Casey could have just been taking advantage of (what Chuck and Sarah hadn’t realized would be) a one-time opportunity. Casey could have been giving them what he thought they wanted, knowing what was going to happen next.
‘Well, thank you but no thank you, Casey,‘ Chuck thinks.
They’re not going to let him get away with that. He gives them a little taste of what they’ve been wanting all this time, then he just up and says they’ll be “fine” without him?
Chuck refuses to see it as “goodbye”.
He chooses to see it as “come and get me”.
“We’re not gonna let him go, Sarah. We’re going to get him back.”
“How?”
Chuck has an idea. Slowly his frown smoothes and the corners of his lips rise. “Well… We do sorta know someone who specializes in telling people how to get a lover to come back to them.”
“Who- Roan?”
It’s worth a shot. Casey should be familiar with Roan’s methods. He took the man’s training three times. He’s less likely to mistake the Roan school of seduction techniques for something less sexual (Chuck was rather embarrassed to realize, the last time, that Casey had mistaken many of Chuck’s attempts to seduce him as… well. Chuck not actually trying to be seductive.) Or something shady (When Sarah first started seriously pursuing Casey, he thought Chuck wasn’t aware of what Sarah was doing and didn’t react well to Sarah’s attempt to “cheat” on Chuck with him.)
“It’s worth a shot,” Chuck says aloud.
“Do you think he’ll even help us?” Sarah asks. It’s a valid question. How many spy couples have actually called Roan and asked how they might seduce a third spy into joining them in the bedroom?
“If he won’t, we’ll just have to figure things out for ourselves. I mean… we’ve done it once already, right?” Chuck certainly hopes he sounds more confident than he feels.
“Right…”
And thus Operation Seduce Colonel Casey begins.
___
It isn’t an easy call to make.
On one hand, they’re super secret world-class spies. They disarm bombs and take down oppressive foreign regimes and fight bad guys 365 days a year. They should be able to look a colleague in the eyes and say, ‘I want to be with the man who is my partner. No. Not the one I married. The other one.‘ or ‘I want another man to fuck my incredibly sexy wife… And me.‘
They rescued Roan Montgomery from drowning in martinis and his own self-pity - they should be able to say anything to him.
But. Yeah. It’s still hard.
Roan blinks. He looks from one of them to the other. And back again. “Pardon me?”
It isn’t a great start.
Chuck and Sarah exchange a glance. They’re sitting on their couch together, holding hands, talking to Roan through the video comm system hooked up to their flatscreen. They dressed up to make this call. Nothing too flashy, but something more appropriate by Roan standards than their usual casual dress. Sarah’s wearing a slinky black dress and Chuck’s wearing a silk shirt.
Roan looks at them like they’re wearing clown costumes or something.
Chuck is probably blushing. Thank god for Sarah - her chin juts up just that tiny bit that says she’s locked in on doing something, and she doesn’t even blink as she says, “You heard us. I know this is an… unusual request-”
“Not exactly unusual, as far as the setup goes,” Roan corrects her. “You’d be surprised how often spy teams who work together… play together. Honestly, I’m surprised you haven’t all started your own round of musical beds long before now.”
Chuck and Sarah do not look at each other at that. The only thing worse than having to ask another man what they should do to get their man, is telling him that they’ve already tried things their way… And it didn’t stick.
“But the target…” Roan shakes his head.
Chuck stiffens, and he can feel Sarah doing the same beside him. “What about the targ- What about Casey?” Chuck asks.
For the first time, Roan smiles - perhaps at the defensiveness in Chuck’s tone; maybe because of the dangerous way Sarah is looking at him.
“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” he explains, “I’m well aware of Colonel Casey’s appeal to members of both his own and the opposite sex. On only one of the three occasions that Mr. Casey failed my program did he do so because he simply refused to use the prescribed methods. In his first attempt, I believe his partner found concentration increasingly difficult as she and the Colonel worked their way through our exercises in seduction and extraction.”
Chuck and Sarah visibly relax. Chuck even feels a smile tugging at his own lips, imagining the all-too-believable scenario of Casey’s Seduction Training partner becoming too distracted by a chiseled jaw and broad shoulders to perform properly and Casey becoming confused and irritated by her lack of concentration.
“However,” Roan cautions them, “John stopped using the methods I taught not because they were ineffective, but because he had no patience for the subtle art of seduction. You’ve seen for yourself, no doubt on several occasions - most certainly in Morocco - that the Colonel would much rather shoot his way through an obstacle than gently ease it aside. A man with that mindset makes for a remarkably challenging target for seduction.”
“Are you saying that your methods can’t work on a man like Casey?” Sarah asks. Chuck does smile at the pride in her voice. The whole point of this call is that they need to know how to seduce Casey - and for that, he needs to be seducible. But it’s with some affection that Chuck considers the possibility that Casey may be above susceptibility to Roan’s tactics. He is Casey, after all. Impervious to many things the mere man is generally susceptible to.
“Oh, not at all, Agent Walker,” Roan replies quickly. He has his pride as well. “Only that seducing Mr. Casey may take a level of commitment and a degree of… creativity that the standard mark does not.”
“We’re committed,” Chuck says immediately. This isn’t about some… fun romp they’re planning to spice up their sex-life. This is about getting back the third member of what they should have always realized is a three-man team - in and out of the bedroom and Castle. And about making it absolutely clear this time that what they want is the latter, not the former. “We can be creative. We’ll do whatever it takes. Please, Roan… Help us make this happen.”
“Very well. I can’t say no to you crazy kids.” Roan grins. “Just make sure you mention this to Diane if it all works out. I’m afraid I’m in the doghouse again for that thing in Jacarta.”
Chuck looks at Sarah and sees her looking back, struggling to keep a straight face. They haven’t heard about “that thing in Jacarta”. Thinking about General Beckman and sex feels kind of like thinking about their parents’ sex lives, and they’re more than happy keeping that topic of conversation off the table between them and ‘Diane’. But if it helps…
“Uh… Sure. We will,” Sarah promises.
“Excellent. Alright then, First thing’s first…”
Ten minutes in, Chuck decides they ought to take notes.
___
A lasting seduction, Roan tells Chuck and Sarah - citing material from his advanced courses (Seduction Under Critical Circumstances and Seduction for Deep Cover Operations) - is less like an air strike and more like a three-pronged attack. You don’t just pick an angle and bomb your target from it; you come at the target from every angle - land, sea, air.
Or, in the case of seduction: audio, visual, tactile. (In other words: sound, sight, touch). If you’re really desperate, you can throw in smell, too, Roan adds. And Chuck and Sarah sorta are, so Chuck tries. He starts wearing a cologne; something strong and earthy, like he thinks Casey might like. Sarah goes nuts over it, but Casey… Not so much.
“What’s that?” Casey asks, wrinkling up his nose.
The two of them are in the van, surveilling. Chuck’s begun Phase One of his visual attack on Casey’s resistance - he’s wearing a tailored, light blue shirt Sarah said would make Casey want to pop buttons and fitted black pants that even Chuck thinks makes his thighs and ass look good.
“That? What ’that’?”
“That that, you moron,” Casey snaps, gesturing impatiently at Chuck’s neck. “That smell. What is it?”
“Oh. That.” Chuck’s heart sinks at the shuttered expression on Casey’s face. On the one hand, Casey did notice the cologne. Which is a good thing. On the other hand, he doesn’t look seduced by it. A little siren goes off in Chuck’s head: ‘Abort mission! Abort mission!‘
But it’s going to take more than a scowl and one poor choice in toiletries to make Chuck do that.
“Uh… cologne. Why? You don’t like it?” Chuck tries (tries tries tries) not to sound too interested in Casey’s answer.
Casey’s watching the surveillance footage being fed into the van. “It’s alright,” he says neutrally. Then he smirks and turns. “Playing tricks to keep Walker interested already? Thought the honeymoon would last a little longer than that for you two, Bartowski.”
Chuck doesn’t know what Casey thinks about when he teases Chuck and Sarah about their relationship. Is he remembering the “honeymoon” the three of them had in Chuck and Sarah’s bedroom? Does he wonder if Chuck and Sarah ever think about including him again? Could he really not know how much they’ve missed him since then?
‘I’m not wearing it to keep Sarah,’ Chuck thinks, but says: “The honeymoon is lasting just fine.”
The last word tastes wrong after what Sarah told him about Casey thinking she and Chuck would be just “fine” without him.
So Chuck leans closer and adds, in a softer voice, “We’ve just been a little lone-”
“Peralez is on the move,” Casey says suddenly, in his ‘target acquired’ voice. Sure enough, on the surveillance screen Chuck can see that the man they’ve been surveilling is leaving his office building and walking towards his car.
The members of terrorist sleeper cells have terrible timing.
“You’ll just have to tell me why Walker’s got you spritzing yourself with girly spray later.”
“I’m not- Yeah, right. Later.” There’s not much else Chuck can say with Casey climbing into the driver’s seat of the van. He checks the cartridges of his tranq guns and secures their equipment in case Casey has to speed up to stay with Peralez.
Chuck’s pretty sure they can cross SEDUCE CASEY BY SMELLING REALLY SEXY off of his and Sarah’s list of possible angles of attack.
He hopes Sarah has better luck with Phase One of her visual assault. Surely she can work a cat suit to greater success than Chuck can work a new cologne.
___
The cat suit is a bust. Casey does a double take as he walks into Castle and sees Sarah in all that skin-tight black leather (which is promising and makes both Sarah and Chuck grin in anticipated triumph) but things go downhill from there.
Bentley takes an interest in their mission, infiltrating a smuggling ring outside of Barstow. (That or she’s still pissed at them for disbanding her Gretas, and she just wants to hang around, being a nuisance.) She takes one look at Sarah’s get-up and immediately starts questioning the wisdom of wearing stiletto pumps into a potential combat scenario. She spends the entire night throwing Sarah snide glances and laughs out loud when Sarah does, eventually, break a heel.
Sarah uses that heel to stab a Chechnyan smuggler in the neck, so the laughter stops, but still. It never does a girl’s pride good to have her stiletto heels laughed at.
Casey is awkward and quiet the whole time. Perhaps he’s uncomfortable being around both his new boss and his old team. (Or is that his old boss and his new team… who were his old team when his old boss had a team… Whatever.) Perhaps, like Chuck, he’s just fighting the urge to throw Sarah up against the nearest flat surface and do incredibly unprofessional things to her.
That second thing would be great, as far as Chuck and Sarah are concerned, but Casey disappears as soon as they all get back to Castle. Chuck and Sarah go to store the team’s weapons in one of the more rarely used weapons lockers (because Chuck can’t wait til they get home to explore the flat-surface/unprofessional-things idea) and Casey walks in on them while Chuck’s face is buried in Sarah’s naked breasts. Sarah’s still-leather clad legs are wrapped around Chuck’s now naked waist, and the both of them are too caught up in what they’re doing, when Casey suddenly appears in the locker, to disentangle and get their hands on him fast enough to prevent him from leaving.
“For god’s sake, Bartowski, Walker. Get a room.”
“John, we-”
“Another room,” Casey growls and stomps out.
It’s disheartening. Chuck and Sarah still have sex (because Chuck’s still wearing those damned pants, and that cologne, and Sarah wore a cat suit - they’re both incredibly turned on) and it’s still awesome.
But it’s sad, too.
They’ve got to step up their efforts.
[tbc]