Fic:Can't Leave Love in the Sun - Chuck, vamp!Chuck/Bryce UST/Angst, PG-13
Title: Can't Leave Love in the Sun
Fandom: Chuck
Pairing: Chuck/Bryce UST
Rating: PG-13
Summary: For cghardy's prompt. Chuck saves Bryce in the white room... by turning him.
AO3
Chuck Bartowski has never been a 'things couldn't possibly be worse' kind of guy - he's always had a much more positive outlook.
Well. Always except for the time that his best friend (whom he was secretly in love with) stole his girlfriend (whom he'd been desperately trying to love instead) and - oh, yeah - got him kicked out of Stanford for cheating (thereby blacklisting him from any other comparably worthy university). Chuck found it difficult to look at the brighter side of things then.
But, of course, that was before Chuck went on an amazing, two-month journey through Europe...back-packing through the breath-taking English countryside on his future brother-in-law's dime, and got murdered in his sleep.
He's pretty sure that being undead would do wonders for anybody's perspective.
o0o
And, yes, by undead I mean, technically, 'not living'. Beyond the pale. A creature of the night... (Not that any self-respecting vampire calls himself that. Vampires, Chuck has found since becoming one, hate euphemisms.)
Chuck went to Europe with a broken heart and came back without a pulse.
Allergic to sunlight... (As in, he can go out in it, but he's gotta lather on the SPF 80+ for so much as a ten minute stroll.)
Craving blood. (Specifically, a nice, chilled O Neg... Imported, when possible. Americans really do consume far too many carcinogens. Taste one, if you don't believe me, and you'll find out...)
And capable of seeing in the dark, of hearing a man's heartbeat from several paces away-
Okay, those last two things are pretty awesome, but other than that, tell me that Chuck hasn't experienced 'worse.'
Chuck, more than anybody, knows just how much worse even the worst moment of a person's life can get.
He knew it before his ex-best friend sent him an e-mail that filled up his head with government secrets, making him - ostensibly - government property. Which is good, because that... really sucked at first.
o0o
The thing about looking at the bright side, Chuck thinks, is that you can't stop doing it - no matter how dark the dark side of a situation gets. Stopping, especially in the middle of a bad turn turning further into bad territory, is a recipe for panic.
For example, when the cube containing the latest version of the Intersect falls into the wrong hands... That's bad.
When Chuck drops into the bad guys' white room and finds Bryce locked inside, shot, he realizes that things have gotten worse.
When Chuck rushes to Bryce's side... and remembers (about the second that the smell hits him - and, with it, an involuntary if shameful hunger pang) that Bryce being shot means Bryce bleeding...
Chuck is inclined to panic.
"No.... No no no no no... Bryce-"
"Take- take this, Chuck," Bryce says, pushing a small, rectangular device with a large, flat plug into Chuck's hand. "You have to... destroy the Intersect... before Fulcrum can get it."
'Fuck Fulcrum,' Chuck wants to say back. Chuck will destroy their Intersect... He'll destroy every Fulcrum agent he can hear scurrying around in this building. He may be a more... docile vampire than most, but he's still a vampire. Even he can be pushed past his limits.
And watching Bryce struggle to speak in front of him, slumped against a white room wall, blood pooling beneath him on the floor... This is one of Chuck's limits.
Rage and fear start the tingling that begins in Chuck's gums.... Rage, that someone has done this... Hurt his friend (whom Chuck is secretly in love with - yes, still) like this... and fear because, of all of the members of Team Bartowski who could have landed in this white room with Bryce... it just had to be the only one who could eat him.
But its realization that causes Chuck's fangs to finally emerge.
"Tell Sarah-" Bryce begins.
"No. Bryce, you can tell her yourself. You're gonna be-" Bryce is not going to be alright, Chuck knows - not unless Chuck does something. He can hear Bryce's heart already beginning to fail. Chuck's voice is thick, not only with the shifting of mandible and bone in his jaw but with the constriction of his throat, the onset of tears...
And then Chuck realizes.
He's the only member of his team who could kill Bryce as quickly as the bullet in Bryce's gut, just by letting his concentration slip for a second.
But he's also the only one who can save him.
If what Chuck is about to do could be considered "saving" Bryce... and not simply making a worse situation worst.
Chuck thinks about what it was like to die and to come back... What life has been like since he was given this incredible gift-slash-curse- He thinks about the other vampires he has met since becoming one himself and about how different different men can become once they've been turned...
But when Chuck thinks about the alternative- About letting Bryce die, for good this time. About Bryce being gone, forever, and Chuck having to live with that - not just for the rest of his "life time", but for eternity...
Chuck knows that this is a chance he cannot help himself but take.
"Chuck-"
Chuck doesn't know if Bryce can see him. He isn't blinking. But Chuck moves quickly all the same. If he does this wrong... he doesn't want the last thing that Bryce sees to be the face of a monster. He scoops Bryce up into his lap and bites through his own tongue instead of into his wrist to provide the blood exchange that he needs to turn Bryce.
Then he kisses Bryce for all he's worth. If this doesn't work... Chuck doesn't want to live forever with the fact that he never worked up the nerve to do that either.
And only after he's felt Bryce kissing him back... after he's felt Bryce's throat moving beneath his fingertips, does Chuck stop and bury his face in the curve of Bryce's neck.
They probably look like a scene out of a horror movie. His blood is on Bryce's lips... Bryce's blood is everywhere. But Chuck tells Bryce, "You're gonna be alright," again, and he makes himself believe it. "You're gonna be alright, Bryce."
'For better or for worse...'
And then Chuck sinks his fangs into Bryce's flesh and what would have been Bryce's dying breath becomes a gasp at the unique sensation of being fed upon.
[end.]
Author's Note: I've actually been playing with a looong vamp!Chuck AU fic like this for a while :p So I just took tiny bits of it to make this almost comment-fic sized entry. If there's a significant shift in mood from part one to part three of this, that's why. Hopefully it doesn't make this feel too disjointed :p
Fandom: Chuck
Pairing: Chuck/Bryce UST
Rating: PG-13
Summary: For cghardy's prompt. Chuck saves Bryce in the white room... by turning him.
AO3
Chuck Bartowski has never been a 'things couldn't possibly be worse' kind of guy - he's always had a much more positive outlook.
Well. Always except for the time that his best friend (whom he was secretly in love with) stole his girlfriend (whom he'd been desperately trying to love instead) and - oh, yeah - got him kicked out of Stanford for cheating (thereby blacklisting him from any other comparably worthy university). Chuck found it difficult to look at the brighter side of things then.
But, of course, that was before Chuck went on an amazing, two-month journey through Europe...back-packing through the breath-taking English countryside on his future brother-in-law's dime, and got murdered in his sleep.
He's pretty sure that being undead would do wonders for anybody's perspective.
o0o
And, yes, by undead I mean, technically, 'not living'. Beyond the pale. A creature of the night... (Not that any self-respecting vampire calls himself that. Vampires, Chuck has found since becoming one, hate euphemisms.)
Chuck went to Europe with a broken heart and came back without a pulse.
Allergic to sunlight... (As in, he can go out in it, but he's gotta lather on the SPF 80+ for so much as a ten minute stroll.)
Craving blood. (Specifically, a nice, chilled O Neg... Imported, when possible. Americans really do consume far too many carcinogens. Taste one, if you don't believe me, and you'll find out...)
And capable of seeing in the dark, of hearing a man's heartbeat from several paces away-
Okay, those last two things are pretty awesome, but other than that, tell me that Chuck hasn't experienced 'worse.'
Chuck, more than anybody, knows just how much worse even the worst moment of a person's life can get.
He knew it before his ex-best friend sent him an e-mail that filled up his head with government secrets, making him - ostensibly - government property. Which is good, because that... really sucked at first.
o0o
The thing about looking at the bright side, Chuck thinks, is that you can't stop doing it - no matter how dark the dark side of a situation gets. Stopping, especially in the middle of a bad turn turning further into bad territory, is a recipe for panic.
For example, when the cube containing the latest version of the Intersect falls into the wrong hands... That's bad.
When Chuck drops into the bad guys' white room and finds Bryce locked inside, shot, he realizes that things have gotten worse.
When Chuck rushes to Bryce's side... and remembers (about the second that the smell hits him - and, with it, an involuntary if shameful hunger pang) that Bryce being shot means Bryce bleeding...
Chuck is inclined to panic.
"No.... No no no no no... Bryce-"
"Take- take this, Chuck," Bryce says, pushing a small, rectangular device with a large, flat plug into Chuck's hand. "You have to... destroy the Intersect... before Fulcrum can get it."
'Fuck Fulcrum,' Chuck wants to say back. Chuck will destroy their Intersect... He'll destroy every Fulcrum agent he can hear scurrying around in this building. He may be a more... docile vampire than most, but he's still a vampire. Even he can be pushed past his limits.
And watching Bryce struggle to speak in front of him, slumped against a white room wall, blood pooling beneath him on the floor... This is one of Chuck's limits.
Rage and fear start the tingling that begins in Chuck's gums.... Rage, that someone has done this... Hurt his friend (whom Chuck is secretly in love with - yes, still) like this... and fear because, of all of the members of Team Bartowski who could have landed in this white room with Bryce... it just had to be the only one who could eat him.
But its realization that causes Chuck's fangs to finally emerge.
"Tell Sarah-" Bryce begins.
"No. Bryce, you can tell her yourself. You're gonna be-" Bryce is not going to be alright, Chuck knows - not unless Chuck does something. He can hear Bryce's heart already beginning to fail. Chuck's voice is thick, not only with the shifting of mandible and bone in his jaw but with the constriction of his throat, the onset of tears...
And then Chuck realizes.
He's the only member of his team who could kill Bryce as quickly as the bullet in Bryce's gut, just by letting his concentration slip for a second.
But he's also the only one who can save him.
If what Chuck is about to do could be considered "saving" Bryce... and not simply making a worse situation worst.
Chuck thinks about what it was like to die and to come back... What life has been like since he was given this incredible gift-slash-curse- He thinks about the other vampires he has met since becoming one himself and about how different different men can become once they've been turned...
But when Chuck thinks about the alternative- About letting Bryce die, for good this time. About Bryce being gone, forever, and Chuck having to live with that - not just for the rest of his "life time", but for eternity...
Chuck knows that this is a chance he cannot help himself but take.
"Chuck-"
Chuck doesn't know if Bryce can see him. He isn't blinking. But Chuck moves quickly all the same. If he does this wrong... he doesn't want the last thing that Bryce sees to be the face of a monster. He scoops Bryce up into his lap and bites through his own tongue instead of into his wrist to provide the blood exchange that he needs to turn Bryce.
Then he kisses Bryce for all he's worth. If this doesn't work... Chuck doesn't want to live forever with the fact that he never worked up the nerve to do that either.
And only after he's felt Bryce kissing him back... after he's felt Bryce's throat moving beneath his fingertips, does Chuck stop and bury his face in the curve of Bryce's neck.
They probably look like a scene out of a horror movie. His blood is on Bryce's lips... Bryce's blood is everywhere. But Chuck tells Bryce, "You're gonna be alright," again, and he makes himself believe it. "You're gonna be alright, Bryce."
'For better or for worse...'
And then Chuck sinks his fangs into Bryce's flesh and what would have been Bryce's dying breath becomes a gasp at the unique sensation of being fed upon.
[end.]
Author's Note: I've actually been playing with a looong vamp!Chuck AU fic like this for a while :p So I just took tiny bits of it to make this almost comment-fic sized entry. If there's a significant shift in mood from part one to part three of this, that's why. Hopefully it doesn't make this feel too disjointed :p