First Stand
Title: First Stand
Author : loonie_lupin (ff.net) /nilitara (livejournal)
Fandom : Chuck
Characters/Pairing : Chuck, Bryce (intended as close friendship but could be seen as pre-slash), guest appearance by others
Rating : FRT
Summary : When he comes to Chuck at Thanksgiving, Bryce doesn’t ask to talk to Sarah but to Chuck himself.
Disclaimer : The characters and settings are not mine but the property of their creators.
First Stand
“I need to talk to you,” Bryce said as Chuck was clutching his marshmallow bag tightly, still not believing who was standing in front of him.
“I have to go back to the dinner,” he answered, not too sure what else he could do.
“Excuse yourself.”
“Which would be fine if I didn’t have both Sarah and Casey as guests. They would be suspicious.”
As much as Bryce wanted to insist, he knew Chuck had a point. He couldn’t just leave the dinner with an excuse after being outside for longer than it took to get what he had come for. They would want to know what had happened during that time and probably spy on him, which would not allow Bryce to talk with him. Yet, he really had to speak with Chuck.
“After, then,” he conceded. “Please, Chuck.”
Chuck wanted to say no. He really, really wanted to say no but looking at Bryce, looking into his eyes, he knew he couldn’t. Chuck was certain Bryce, being who he was, was perfectly able to pretend with the best of them but he was sure the emotion he could read in his eyes were true. He was certain of it and he did remember that Bryce used to be his friend, his best friend. His betrayal was so much easier to forget now that he knew it had been to save him.
“Okay,” Chuck heard himself say. “Okay.”
He thought for a minute.
“Wait in my room while we finish downstairs. I don’t know how long it will be but I’m sure you can find something to do. Just be careful, its bugged. Casey,” he added almost unnecessarily.
Bryce smiled, his brilliant smile, the one Chuck remembered from the old days, when they were having fun together, trying to do things under the radar and suddenly he was almost afraid.
“I’ll make sure we can have some privacy without tipping Casey off. Thanks, Chuck.”
“Yeah, well, don’t thank me yet.”
But he already knew he was going to listen to whatever Bryce had to tell him and he also knew he was probably going to get dragged into whatever scheme he had concocted. After all, he did implicitly promise not to tell Sarah and Casey that he was going to meet with him.
He went back to the dinner, marshmallow in hands and tried to act as if nothing had happened while he was outside. He wasn’t the best liar but no one had any reason to suspect something was going to happen so they weren’t looking for it which meant that he more or less succeeded at pretending. At least, no one seemed to be thinking his behavior strange. When it was his turn to say what he was thankful for, he invented something about his family, his girlfriend and his friend, both new and old, being loyal to him.
Maybe someone would have been able to tell that it had something to do with Bryce but his sister and Morgan thought him dead and Sarah and Casey seemed to believe he was talking about Morgan and Casey himself and he didn’t feel the need to correct their assumption.
The dinner soon came to an end and, after Morgan and Ana left, Chuck saw both Casey and Sarah to the door. He was ready to pretext being tired to avoid having to spend the night to Sarah, pretending to do whatever couple did, but they told him they had things to do during the night and Chuck had the strangest feeling they were looking for the man hiding in his room. Yet, knowing they didn’t feel the need to tell him the truth, he felt way less guilty not telling them he knew exactly where he was. They were supposed to trust each other but they didn’t tell him what he needed to know.
At least, Bryce had had the excuse of not being able to tell him without permission of telling him he was CIA at the time. And was he really comparing them to Bryce? Yes, apparently he was and he had already established he would be more willing to trust Bryce than Casey or Sarah. At least he knew part of the truth about Bryce, he knew a lot about him which was more than he could say for the other. Sarah wasn’t even willing to tell him her real name.
“You didn’t want to spend some time with Sarah?” Ellie asked him, effectively jolting him out of his thought.
“We were both tired,” he said with a smile, as an excuse.
He hated lying to her but he knew it was a necessity if he wanted to keep her safe. Besides, what was he supposed to tell her. No, we can’t spend time together because Sarah and Casey have to find a very alive and CIA superspy Bryce Larkin who’s presently hiding in my room wanting to talk to me? Yes, not, it wouldn’t do. Not at all.
“Well, go get some rest then. Devon and I can finish,” she said, apparently buying his excuse.
“Are you sure? Oh, Ellie, I love you,” he said, hugging her close to him. “You’re the best.”
She was a bit surprised by the demonstration of affection but she had become somewhat used to her brother’s eccentric behavior in the last few months, so she and Devon just watched him go upstairs without saying another word.
Chuck went directly to his room and opened the door. It was very dark. Not only was there no light but the curtains had been closed completely, probably so Casey wouldn’t see anything from his apartment were he to check on Chuck. Of course, Chuck couldn’t stay in the dark so he turned on the light before closing and locking the door behind him. It just wouldn’t have done it if Ellie had walked in while Bryce was still there.
Talking about Bryce, he was lying on his back on Chuck’s bed and, for a second, Chuck thought he had actually fallen asleep waiting for him. Only for a second.
“You don’t actually need my permission to come in your own room,” Bryce said, having noticed that Chuck hadn’t made a step away from the door without really opening his eyes.
“No, I really don’t. Excuse me for not knowing the etiquette when a dead ex best friend is on my bed. Casey can’t hear us?” he asked, ignoring the very brief flash of pain in Bryce’s now open eyes as he was watching him come to him.
“No he can’t. Though it’s more Sarah I’m worried about.”
That kind of surprised Chuck because, from what he had been able to work out from the brief conversation back in the headquarter, while Chuck was his hostage, was that it was Casey that had shot Bryce in the chest. Besides, wasn’t he supposed to trust Sarah. They were partner and lover.
“Sarah…. Isn’t she your girlfriend?”
Okay, Chuck really hadn’t meant to say that out loud but sometimes these things just spilled out of his mouth without his mind being able to control it.
“It’s not…. Yeah, we were together, because it was convenient. Because sometimes after a mission you’re high on adrenaline and need someone or because you just need comfort from someone who actually know who you are and it’s easy to pretend it’s love and, after a while, you get caught in your own pretend.”
“So, you were just using her?”
“We were using each other. Don’t think she’s a fragile little girl who can’t sleep with someone without feeling. We all have had to seduce some target. She’s good at pretending, very good. I almost believed she did have some feeling for me but she proved she didn’t.”
Bryce had just made a speech proving that spy couldn’t be trusted, that you couldn’t trust their feeling because they could fake them, but he couldn’t help feeling sorry for Bryce. It wasn’t a life he could have lived. It was hard enough with Sarah pretending to be his girlfriend but if they actually had to add sex in the equation, he wasn’t sure what would happen and he really didn’t want to find out anymore.
“What did you want to tell me then,” he asked, feeling better in that line of questioning, when he could pretend that Bryce was just another agent he had to work with and not someone he had known as ‘just human’.
“You should sit,” Bryce instructed, scooting over from his now sitting position on the bed, leaving more than enough place for Chuck to sit beside him.
He did so cautiously. It just reminded him way too much of the Stanford days for him to be really comfortable. But he was humoring Bryce for the moment because he really wanted to know what was it that Bryce was so intent on telling him that he was risking getting caught by either the CIA or the NSA.
And when the story began to unfold, Chuck remembered exactly why you should be careful what you wished for.
Bryce began to told him about the intersect, how it came into existence and what kind of things were put in it, who was in charge. Chuck realized, at that moment, he was being told things that weren’t supposed to be and what kind of trust Bryce was putting into him. If he were to tell anyone Bryce was telling him this, he would probably be convicted of something.
Once that was done, he told him about a ring inside the CIA itself, Fulcrum, with people of every level that wanted those secret for themselves. The higher up of the CIA gave him a mission: saving those secret at any cost but since there was no telling who, inside the CIA was part of that organization, he had to pretend to have gone rogue and decided to destroy or steal the intersect to make sure no one could use what was inside. Since he had been out of time and surrounded, he had only one solution: sending these information to someone to be sure a copy of the intersect was kept.
“But why me?” was the first thing out of Chuck’s mouth and that was a question that had haunted him since he had realized what had been in that fateful e-mail.
“I needed someone I could trust,” Bryce said.
“But they were other people…”
“No, they weren’t. There’s no one else Chuck. You have a family, friends who would die for you. I don’t. Most of the people I know are spies. You remember when I told you about my family. Everything was true. I didn’t lie about things that didn’t concern the CIA, everything you know about me from that time is true. And I don’t have any other friend. You’re the only one. There was no one else that I could have trust with all of this, Chuck.”
It was something that Chuck just couldn’t comprehend. He couldn’t Bryce’s only friend, right? They hadn’t even seen each other in years and yet, he knew it was the truth and it was the reason Bryce had been hurt when Chuck had put their friendship in the past and not the present.
“I’m sorry Chuck. I never wanted to put you in danger but you were really the only one I could trust with it.”
The sincerity in his eyes was too much for Chuck. He felt any residual anger and hate he had felt towards his friend fade away and he smile to him, letting him know it was okay, he was forgiven for real.
“I understand. Plus, it certainly made my life less boring, you know.”
Bryce smiled back. It was nice being there, Chuck joking around with him, especially after everything else that had happened, all these months at the hands of Fulcrum.
“What happened Bryce?”
When he looked at Chuck, he saw a worried look, the one he used to have whenever Bryce came back in the morning looking like death warmed over, or when he woke up screaming because of a nightmare Chuck believed were about his father.
“When they had you,” he added when Bryce didn’t answer immediately.
Bryce had actually understood what Chuck had meant. He just didn’t want to talk about it. Yet, he would have to, at least once. He knew it. He would have to write a report on it. Beside Chuck was so easy to talk to, had always been and it would be nice if at least one of the people who knew the story cared about him some.
So he began his tale. He told Chuck about how he woke up in a moving van, disorientated, in pain, with Tom standing over him, wanting to know all about the intersect, how Bryce had made damn sure he thought he had looked at the pictures and had become the human intersect, thus ensuring not only that they would keep him alive at any price, but also preventing them for looking for Chuck. He didn’t want to put him in more danger he already had.
However, once they thought he was the intersect, they wanted to know all the secret he detained. And they wanted them on demand. They tried to get him to flash on things and he pretended but of course, he couldn’t and wouldn’t tell them anything. They used physical method of torture at the beginning, wanting to make him talk, wanting to have Bryce speaking willingly but when it didn’t happen, they changed their method.
If Bryce didn’t want to tell them, they would bypass his consciousness. They tried mind breaking methods to try to pick the information directly from his brain.
Chuck listened to the story with growing disgust, horror and anger. He never thought of himself as a violent person but he was ready to kill at the moment and if one of the member of Fulcrum was there, they would either be in a world of pain or death right now. He wouldn’t even hesitate for a second.
How had Bryce survived with his mind intact? He didn’t know. Chuck knew a good part was his training but he still couldn’t believe.
Yet, Chuck could see that he wasn’t really okay, not completely. He wasn’t destroyed, no, they hadn’t broken him but there was a haunted look in his eyes as he was talking about the experience.
It wouldn’t be the first time Chuck did something utterly spontaneous and impulsive, not to mention ridiculous, and it would probably not be the last time. At least, it was Bryce and not Casey. He wasn’t sure he would have survived the experience if he had actually hugged his friend without any preamble.
Bryce still stiffened in his arms and already Chuck was thinking about something to say to diffuse the situation while going away without losing face - hell, even with losing face, what’s once more in a lifetime - when Bryce relaxed and put his arms around Chuck to return the embrace, hiding his face in the crook of Chuck’s neck.
He was trembling slightly and Chuck spontaneously lifted a hand to put it in his hair, petting him slowly, trying to give him some comfort that his friend apparently had lacked for a very long time. It seemed to work pretty well because, soon enough, he could feel the tremor stop and his body relax utterly against him, almost weighing him down.
Bryce was feeling more relaxed that he had in a long time, even a bit drowsy. He felt so at ease in Chuck’s arms that his eyes began to close on their own as he was fighting against sleep. Chuck must have felt this because he could feel him smile and he talked in his hair.
“Just stay tonight. You’re exhausted. They won’t be looking for you here and I would be worried if you left now, when you’re obviously not at your best.”
Bryce broke the hug and looked at him. For a second, Chuck thought he was going to refuse but he nodded slowly.
“Thank you,” he said sincerely.
Chuck nodded too and went to his closet. He elected a training pant and a t-shirt to give them to Bryce. He would he more at ease to sleep in them than in his clothes.
“It should be fine,” Chuck said taking his own pajama and going to the bathroom to change.
When he came back, Bryce was wearing the clothes he had been offered, his own neatly folded on the desk. Chuck’s clothes were too long for him but it was alright to sleep. He seemed to hesitate, well as much as Bryce Larkin could seem hesitant in any given situation, which was not a lot and you had to really know what you were looking for to see it. Chuck knew what he was looking for, he knew him well enough to.
Apparently, he didn’t want to push, which seemed so unlike the Bryce he used to know, who would already be lying under the cover, not bothered by what anyone would think. It should have made Chuck happy but all it really did was to remind him of what Bryce had gone through since the last time he had seen him, playing pool in Stanford.
“We’re adult. I’m sure we can share a bed. It wouldn’t be the first time,” he joked, trying to alleviate the tension.
Bryce acknowledged this with a smile.
“Truth. I’m sure my virtue is perfectly safe with you. Or is it the other way around? But there was usually a reason for it,” he added as he slipped soundlessly under the covers.
Chuck did the same, answering.
“Your nightmares. Which I suppose were not actually about your dad?”
Chuck switched off his bedside lamp, lying on his back and Bryce rolled on his side to face him.
“A few were, yes. But most of them were about the mission I was sent on. I couldn’t exactly tell you the truth.”
There was a blank in the conversation because, really, what kind of answers was there to that?
“I wanted to, though.”
Chuck turned on his side, only able to see Bryce profile in the dark but still able to perceive the slight bright light of his eyes.
“I believe you,” he said because he did, because the Bryce Larkin he knew back then would have wanted to tell Chuck all about his spy duties just because he would have found it cool, probably. “Goodnight, Bryce.”
That was for closing the conversation because he just didn’t feel comfortable with going on. He rolled back on his back and felt Bryce’s eyes on him for a few seconds before he heard him sigh, almost imperceptibly.
“Goodnight, Chuck,” Bryce answered, rolling on his other side and closing his eyes.
Chuck stayed silent and awake as he listened to Bryce’s breathing evening out and deepening until he was sure he was asleep. Only then did he turn to his side, only the little distance between their bodies preventing it from being spooning. He closed his eyes and, tired and reeling about today’s event, he too feel asleep.
When he woke up, the first thing he realized was that he was alone in his bed, his alarm ringing. He reached out on his side and saw the clothes he had landed Bryce the night before neatly folded on the pillow and an envelope on top of it, with his name on it.
Knowing it had to be from Bryce, he opened it quickly and pulled out a white sheet of paper. Apparently, Bryce wanted to make sure no one else was able to read it because it was written in Klingon. Yeah, Bryce way be a superspy, he was still a geek. But what was written was more important than the language it was written in.
“Dear Chuck,
I’m writing this to you while you’re finishing with your Thanksgiving dinner, so forgive me if I’m writing something I’ve already told you.
Since I won’t leave without at least telling you about what has happened for me to blow up the intersect, I won’t tell you again but I have to tell you the reason you’re the one I’ve sent it to if I never got around doing it to your face.
I did it because you’re the only one that could have handled it that I could trust, the only one. I know I made your life very complicated and dangerous and I hope that you will be able to, one day, forgive me for it. I would understand if it never happens.
Chuck, what I’m going to be telling you now, I wouldn’t have told you yet because I want you to have time to think about all what you already know and I want you to be capable to think about it without me around.
I have to go after Fulcrum. If I ever want to be able to live again without being considered a traitor, I need to take them down and answer to the Director about it . I need someone I can trust to help me, Chuck. Not on the field, I can do that alone, but behind the scene. I already told you, you’re the only one I fully trust and there is no one else I would like to play that role but you.
You would only have to tell me if you flash on something concerning Fulcrum and sometimes I would sent you documentation or pictures I want to know if you flash on but nothing more. You would need, of course, to keep it a secret from Sarah and Casey but that’s it. Nothing else.
I’m sure you have a lot to think about and I need you to know that I would understand perfectly if you told me no.
For your answer, I will be at the room 207 of the hotel I stayed in when I visited you in college, before you told me to stay with you. Tomorrow, from 19h00 to 23. If you don’t come, I’ll take it as a no and let you leave your life.
I still hope to see you soon,
Bryce.”
Chuck put the letter down, overwhelmed. Could he really do it? Could he be secretive and deceptive enough to play a double game without tipping Sarah or Casey off? He would have the answer soon enough, tonight. For now, he had to go to work.