Chuck Fic: Funkspiel
Title: Funkspiel
Characters: Chuck, Casey, others
Pairing: It’s mostly gen with some Chuck/Casey, Casey/m
Wordcount: ~ 4700
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Rating: teen
Spoilers: slight spoilers up to S3.08
Beta: Thank you very much, millari.
Summary: John Casey is kissing his throat in a sewer while drugged. Stranger things have happened, but Chuck would have trouble naming one.
Author's note: This is for _usakeh_ who I fear was asking me for an entirely different story. Sorry about that. I went from “flu” to “drug” and from “comfort” to “But it’s Casey!” and then there was plot and stuff. Whenever I get close to the romance tropes, they hide. And when I bring up Casey, they also snicker. I shall do better with the other prompt.
Funkspiel
funkspiel = the tactic of impersonating somebody else in electronic communications; derived from German “radio play”
It had been supposed to be a simple bag job - get in, get the questionable files, get out. That hadn’t happened. Both of them were still wearing the Armani suits from earlier tonight, except blood and sewage had soaked them beyond recognition, and Chuck was breathing hard from keeping 200 pounds of John Casey upright, his heart beating wildly in his chest. Sweet-smelling sewer stench was heavy in the air, the rhythmical splashes of their steps echoing back at them from everywhere. He was praying Sarah had made it without them - ideally coming back with Special Ops - and found the antidote in time. He was praying Casey’s physique was as steely on the inside as it was on the outside, because Intersect or not, Chuck doubted there was a manual in it for treating poisoning by secret service drug without any equipment.
“Come on now, come on...” he panted, and he tried to nudge Casey, who’d gone eerily quiet, but the other man was leaning on him so heavily now that his shoulder was aching. “Stay with me, buddy, don’t black out on me again... and don’t go commando again, either, that would be nice. The last time scared the hell out of me and, and I don’t...” He ran out of air for a moment. “I don’t think I can flash when you’re clinging to me like that...”
Gazing at the other man’s face so close to his for a second - not a distance he was used to with Casey at all -, he saw that Casey’s eyes were glassy, all of his effort and focus on staying on his feet. He swayed, and Chuck hissed when the agent’s full weight crashed against him, heavy bone poking him in sensitive places.
The tip of Casey’s tongue snaked out to wet his lips - yes, definitely too close a close-up -, his face contorting in a scary mix of pain and anger. The latter was probably a statement about the situation in general. “Bartowski. I can’t go on... much farther. Make sure my head... is above water... if I black out... get the hell out... maybe you can make it on your own”
“You know that won’t happen, I...”
“You do as you’re fucking told... for a change,” Casey managed. He was slowing down, and Chuck had to adjust his speed to not drop him. He almost panicked, thinking of what had happened the last time Casey had blacked out - when the drug had kicked in - the sight of a civilian waiter with a gun wound between the eyes still vividly edged into his vision. But he meant it. He wouldn’t leave Casey behind. He wouldn’t leave Morgan or Ellie behind, he’d be damned if he wouldn’t do the same for Casey. He’d made up his mind.
“You’ll die if they find you alone like this.”
Casey smirked. “You... crap.” A hiss of pain interrupted him. Chuck lost his grip on the chunk of a man after all when Casey doubled over, lower arm pressed against his abdomen. It was hard to see in the dark of the sewers, but Chuck thought he saw sweat glistering on Casey’s face, his skin unnaturally pale. “You’ve seen what the drug does to me, Bartowski.” He started coughing. He was coughing up something, and Chuck grew cold with fear that it could be blood. Blood was bad. Blood was really bad. He knew that all without being Ellie. “I’ll be out again in a minute, and there’s no telling... where I’ll think I am once I wake up. Might be Costa Gravas with your luck.”
“It doesn’t have to be!” Chuck barely noticed that a hint of panic had crept in his voice. He threw a glance back to where they’d come from but at least he couldn’t hear anybody following them just yet. “It doesn’t have to be Costa Gravas! It, it - it could be high school! You went to high school, right?”
Casey’s grimace transformed into a smirk for a moment when he glanced at Chuck. “In that case you’d better pray for Costa Gravas, geek.”
Chuck swallowed hard. It was really hard sometimes to deal with Casey’s sense of humor. Especially in situations of mortal danger when Sarah should be showing up right about now with the antidote, except she wasn’t.
Plaintext Casey had called the drug before he’d been so out of it that he resorted to unfunny jokes. The MI-6 had invented it. The Ring had stolen it. It was an interrogation drug, meant to derive classified information from a spy in a very simple way - by confusing them enough to make them think they were at a place in their timeline before it had been classified. No use for it in most situations, but if it was a match, Plaintext raised the Ghost of Christmas Past.
After Casey had caught the dart that had been meant for Chuck - of course -, they’d had just enough time for Sarah to scream “Run!” before Casey’s eyes had started glazing over, and then... Chuck wasn’t entirely sure where and when exactly Casey had thought he had been, but it had been at a place full of people Casey really didn’t like. The only things that had saved Chuck had been... well, the fact that the grenade Casey had thrown at him actually had been a bottle of Mountain Dew, and a very big yellow couch.
His breath calming down slowly, Chuck ignored Casey’s eye roll and followed the agent’s example in sliding down the wall on the other side of the tunnel until he came to sit on a small stone ledge. His feet were still in the sewage - mostly just water in this part of the tunnels, thank God - but Chuck had stopped noticing and caring. He wanted Sarah to be here, for once just for the simple reason that she would know what to do. Same went for Ellie and Devon, really, and he wondered if Awesome would agree to liberate some drugs for him from the hospital. Or maybe he could requisition them? You never knew when you might need it. If Casey should ever pull a Wolverine and attack him again, a sedative would be really helpful.
Chuck cleared his voice. Hunched over and growing paler by the minute, Casey was looking like death warmed over. It was obvious that he wasn’t going any further. “So,” he tried to diffuse the tension. “Anything you want to warn me about while you still can? Uhm, any special times in your biography I should be aware of?”
Casey growled.
Chuck forced some cheer into his voice. “Did you seal any annoying generals in a wall? Anyone’s wife you shouldn’t have kissed...”
“Shut up or I won’t need a flashback to hurt you,” Casey managed. Chuck smirked.
“I won’t leave you alone here,” he said after a moment of silence, quieter, more serious, because he meant it. The Ring owned the place above them, and yes, he could fight his way through the perimeter on his own - but once he emerged from the sewer system, the cameras would spot him, and operatives would start swarming the place in search for his partner. Sarah had said she’d be back. And she would be.
Casey pressed his lips together. “Just get the hell out before it’s too late.”
But he was trembling now, Chuck noticed with alarm, the hand that had been casually resting on his knee now clutching the fabric of his pants. And it was too dark to see more than the silhouette of Casey’s other hand, but he could see fingers twitching, a nervous gesture that was definitely directed towards where Casey’s holster should be. Thank God it was empty now. Sarah had stripped him off his weaponry, although she’d barely been able to contain him before. Chuck wasn’t sure she could have. Usually he’d say that everybody could be defeated, especially by Sarah - but the open panic he had seen in Casey’s eyes when he thought he was escaping from God knew where...
He knew Casey had been tortured by terrorists at least once. It was one of the things Chuck wouldn’t, couldn’t think about if he wanted to survive his new life without losing his mind.
A thud pushed him out of his thoughts and his head snapped up to see Casey had rammed his fist against the tunnel wall behind him, hard enough it had to bleed.
“Casey,” he said. “Casey, are you alright?”
But this time, Casey didn’t answer. Trying to swallow down a sudden surge of anxiety, Chuck picked himself up to crouch down next to the humongous man. “Casey?” he asked again, searching Casey’s face. His eyes were closed now, but his expression was one of distress, his breath irregular and hitched, his lips pressed together. His only response was a grunt, and he rolled his head back to lean against the dirty wall. Chuck muttered a cuss under his breath, reaching out to touch Casey’s shoulder and pausing mid-movement. He grimaced. The two of them might have worked together for two years - okay, Casey had been saving his ass for two years, more accurately - but Casey always kept a healthy manly distance.
But then again, it was not the time to be squeamish. “Casey,” Chuck repeated, as bold as he could, shaking the other man’s upper arm - good God, was that all muscle? “Casey, you have to listen to me. Listen to my voice. I’m Chuck Bartowski. We are in Burbank, in the sewers, which I realize is not the nicest part of Burbank but it still is where I need you to stay, okay? You’re a little bit fuzzy right now, but Sarah is going to find us with the antidote in no time.” Assuming she managed to take out a whole assortment of Ring operatives with nothing but one knife and Casey’s sniper. But, hey, Sarah was as competent as she was attractive and Casey didn’t have to worry about that now...
“Clarence?” Casey muttered, not opening his eyes and okay, that was not good because that wasn’t Chuck’s name but it could also be worse. Casey could have growled “Goya!” instead.
“No,” Chuck said more patiently than he felt. “Casey, I’m Chuck.”
“’ve told you the name is Alex,” Casey muttered. “Stop being a twat and sit down.”
Chuck’s eyes widened. Nervously, he looked back down the tunnel but it was quiet now, only the occasional drop of water to be heard. No Special Ring Ops anywhere in sight. He’d started feeling calmer within the last couple of minutes, he noticed - they would have shown up at this point if they’d ever been close. But they seemed to be safe down here. He could sit this one out, assuming Sarah made it before the drug started poisoning Casey for good. And assuming Casey didn’t take him for a Baath terrorist.
Chuck hadn’t ever heard of an Iraqi called Clarence, though, and he strongly doubted Casey would ever offer a terrorist his real name. Casey wouldn’t even offer his mother his real name. Some weeks had passed since Chuck had learned it, and John Casey was still firmly “John Casey” in his head. The man did have a dead body sealed in a wall, and their name was Alex Coburn. Except when he was drugged.
...oh.
Endless possibilities unreeled in Chuck’s head with the speed of a flash. Oh.
There was a pause.
“Okay,” he said slowly, making sure to touch Casey’s shoulder with his when he followed up on it by sitting down, so that the other man would know it was true. “This is Clarence. Sitting next to you. Alex.”
There was just no chance in hell he’d let go of this unique opportunity to learn something real about Casey.
Chances were they’d die and nobody would ever care that he had, anyway.
Casey, eyes still closed, relaxed visibly when he felt Chuck next to himself. There was a slight frown on his face, but an average Casey frown, not a death and mayhem one, the pain from before apparently gone now that the drug had kicked in. The spy had sort of slumped into himself, taking deeper breaths that made his whole chest rise and fall. Giving him a cautious side-glance, Chuck was startled to see that Casey looked... younger. Lines on his face that were just always there had vanished.
He was trying to make up his mind about what to say in order to get something interesting out of Casey when Casey opened his mouth again. His voice was a mutter, but lucid.
“I think they’re gone.”
“Yeah,” Chuck alias Clarence took a merry short in the dark, “I think, I think they are.”
Casey snorted. “One hell of a night. Didn’t think you’d make it, won’t lie.”
“Uhm, well, you know me.”
“I told you I wouldn’t do it again.”
Chuck paused carefully to make up his mind, wondering what Casey was talking about, what place and time he thought he was in, and if the drug would even make him coherent, or make him babble instead the way hallucinogens would. It was hard to tell from before - there was no way of knowing if Casey had been shooting people coherently back in the mansion.
“Uhm,” he said.
Then he started because something was suddenly grabbing his hand, formerly resting between them in the dirt, and strong long fingers interlaced with his, squeezing so hard it hurt. Oh, right - Casey had taken his hand, Casey style.
“I can’t, alright?” Casey said grudgingly. “This... You’re just a kid. You don’t get...”
“Ca... Alex...”
“An agent can’t have this anyway.”
The spy’s words were suddenly very clear and loud in the dark, and before Chuck could react, Casey had turned around in a motion too fast for a guy this big, suddenly looming over him with his eyes glittering in the dark, one hand pressed against the wall next to Chuck’s head, searching his face. Adrenaline rushed through Chuck when his instincts took note of the fact that he was suddenly caged, the other man uncomfortably close.
It took all his self-control to not flinch away; his body went stiff anyway, a well-aimed Mountain Dew gone grenade and a dead waiter suddenly back in his mind.
Casey’s face was so close to his that Chuck could feel the breath on his own skin, a cloud of body heat and eau-de-Cologne enveloping him, almost faded this late at night but sharp against the stench of sewage.
“Casey...” It was a tiny girlish whimper of alarm.
Casey lowered his head, hovering above Chuck’s neck and Chuck involuntarily shuddered when the sensitive skin of his throat was graced with exhaled air. It was a good thing he wasn’t afraid, he thought with a swallow. And it was true in a way - for all of Casey’s very real and very disturbing love for high-duty explosives, he’d stopped fearing the agent even before it had been wise to do so. He had Casey’s personal number, after all. Thinking of a horrible wedding gone wrong, an eliminated team, he was quite positive there weren’t a lot of people left who could say that about themselves.
Considering the current situation though, another one of them was an agent called Clarence.
A unexpected suspicion suddenly started dawning on Chuck, prompted by skin almost touching skin and too much eery calm emanating from a man he knew to be angry by default. He didn’t have direct proof but it was one of these things that just clicked. Casey hadn’t even been like that with Ilsa Trinchina. Not even remotely so.
Forget the skeletons. Casey had one hell of a lot more in the closet than just that. Clarence was so not an Iraqi.
A nervous, tight tingle started building in the pit of Chuck’s stomach.
He cleared his voice, his instincts switching on deflect.
“Alex...”
“I said don’t do that to me,” Casey managed, but there was not threat in his voice - just so much desperation and pain that it sounded like his throat was closing up - and before Chuck could move, Casey had bent forward, his lips brushing Chuck’s neck.
Chuck whimpered, holding perfectly still despite the shudder the touch prompted mechanically. His mind was running faster than even on a mission, than in a flash. A massive agent was sexually assaulting him in a sewer while drugged - John Casey liked men - Please, Ellie, I really need you now... - There had to be a way to make him stop - John Casey liked men - if Chuck ever asked him about this, Casey wouldn’t even be allowed to tell.
With another sudden crystal-clear insight Chuck realized that John Casey would never risk his career - his life - if he was merley bi, or giving in to a whim - if he had a choice.
Oh my God.
And through all this, his body was still firmly frozen in place. Fingers were gliding down his torso, barely touching, and his throat was lathered with soft, lingering kisses. Only now did Chuck gain a chance to notice that... well, truly, he’d never imagined Casey having sex and it had never been a thing he’d wanted to imagine before. But if he had done so, he would have imagined something... rough. Spy-like. With handcuffs. Instead... A more insistent kiss was placed behind his ear, teeth nibbling softly, and Chuck had to close his eyes and take a deep breath to clear his head. Wow. Holy mother of. Casey was gay - again, what! And Casey was touching him like... like... like how Chuck had seem him touch his Crown Vic.
All at once, the fear left Chuck, because this was still the man he knew. This was Casey. Casey drugged, not himself, and showing Chuck something that he could never ever afford to let anybody witness. But Chuck meant him no harm, and so this wasn’t complex.
First order of business, make the man stop.
“Alex,” Chuck said, reaching out to take the agent by his shoulders. “Alex, look at me.”
Casey - no, Alex Coburn - let go of his throat immediately, the steadying palm gone from his lower back like it had never been there. He retreated far enough to be able to shoot Chuck a searching question, his face still deeply conflicted.
Chuck cleared his voice. “Alex,” he repeated. His voice was flipping slightly, the words not coming easily. If Clarence had ever done the same - and Chuck, feeling a sudden, uncommon, unexpected protective instinct, certainly hoped he’d at least considered it because otherwise Chuck might have to search for the rat and flash his ass off -, if Clarence had ever done the same, it probably hadn’t been easy for him either, although the situation was quite different now. Chuck cleared his voice. “Alex, you’re right. I’m sorry I didn’t listen before. We shouldn’t be doing this.”
The interesting thing about Casey’s face, Chuck had noticed in the past, was how it was constantly in motion. Most of the time, it looked furious or focused or both, considering both of these were Casey’s ruling emotions. He even looked like that when he was hungry, or bored, or selling a kitchen appliance to a tiny Chinese woman. So it twisted something in Chuck’s gut to see it changing from utter openness to perfect cautious stillness.
“I’m glad you’re coming to your senses.” It was snark. With the slightest unreadable twist.
Chuck wondered how the real memory had played out.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
“I...” Casey paused, his face twisting before he looked away.
“It’s for the best,” Chuck said, feeling like he was still saying “I’m sorry.” He never would have thought he could feel so much pity for this man. He never would have thought he’d feel sorry for stopping Casey from kissing him.
“Not a nitwit after all,” Casey said.
Chuck looked away. Casey was still hovering above him closely, like he’d forgotten to move, and Chuck didn’t want to see the emotions fighting it out on his face. He couldn’t quite get himself to feel guilty about setting Casey up in the first place - Plaintext would have made the memory play out either way, and his curiosity had started winning out above all else long before Bryce cheated him out of Stanford. But he knew he had intruded on something deeply private - illegally private -, and all things private were guarded by Casey with Heckler & Koch 9mm MP-5 SMGs. If Sarah ever brought the antidote down here, Chuck still hoped for Casey that he’d forget what had happened under the influence. There was no way of knowing how he’d react.
Now though there was no antidote, without which Casey would eventually die in pain - and as it looked like, also in sewage.
It had been cool down here before, but the body heat exchanged had heated up the air between them, making Chuck feel strangely relaxed about a proximity that had formerly constituted a threat. It suddenly felt right - just at this moment, he was a part of Alex Coburn’s life; he should be close to it physically, too. Thinking of breath brushing against his throat, careful lips touching skin, he even felt a pleasant tingle of arousal at the memory, no matter that he was firmly straight. It didn’t bother him. He’d left behind the sexual hang-ups in Stanford, when his first roommate started changing into a woman.
Movement in the corner of his eye made him look up: Casey had turned to search his - Clarence’s - face again. Strangely, Chuck knew immediately what was about to happen. Much more so than Casey, this slightly younger Alex Coburn was an open book, no walls in sight.
Chuck would have had enough time to deflect, to get up and walk away even or to simply say no, but suddenly, he didn’t want to. When Alex moved, Chuck reached out to put his hand on the back of the agent’s neck and draw him down.
It was ridiculous how soft the man’s lips felt - like he was taking infinite care not to hurt somebody more breakable than him. His chin scratched against Chuck’s, and there was the eau-de-Cologne again, keeping Chuck emphatically aware of the fact that he was kissing a man. He was kissing a man. He was kissing a man in a sewer, and he was reaching out automatically to draw Alex... Casey... John closer while John did the same. It was a strangely snuggly position. Plus, there were soft lips and tongue - oh. Chuck made a noise of surprise, this time in a good way.
He was breathing hard when Casey pulled away, pressing a kiss on his forehead, his cheek, and abruptly setting to get up.
“One of us needs to transfer out of here ASAP,” he said without looking at Chuck.
It took Chuck a moment to orient himself, to get up. His knees had been drawn to his chest, and he felt cramped - especially, embarrassingly so in the area of his crotch. Casey, he thought. Casey, huh. Interesting. Who would have thought.
What had he...? Right. “I’m taking care of it,” he said, as steady as he could manage.
Casey looked down the tunnel - towards the... yard or tents or whatever, wherever he thought they were. His hand was curled up in a fist. It was obvious he was about to leave. Not a man of big goodbyes, then, at least not the verbal kind - Chuck involuntarily touched the wetness on his lips with the tip of his tongue. Surprisingly, Casey wasn’t all that bad with the other kind.
It had been a known fact since Carina that Casey let his guard down fairly easily in the sex department - although Chuck obviously would now have to reconsider how Carina, and Ilsa, fit into the picture that was Casey. He couldn’t allow him to walk away, anyway.
He didn’t even need to flash, he’d done this before - coming up from behind, his elbow sharply connecting with collarbone and pressure point. There was nothing but a slight “Oomph,” and Casey went down with an unspectacular slump. Ready, Chuck managed to catch him, making sure the spy’s head stayed above water when he put him down.
---
He was sitting with the agent’s head on his lap, a comforting hand on his shoulder whenever Casey twisted, his face covered with sweat, quietly talking to himself in his delirium. The sewage had soaked his formerly fancy Armani pants up to his knees, but he was long beyond noticing the smell, or the spongy things squishing under his feet.
Sarah would come. He knew she’d come. He couldn’t leave him now.
“...wouldn’t tell you even if you cut off my balls,” Casey muttered. Then he broke into a string of what was possibly Japanese. Chuck squished his shoulder.
Plaintext was good stuff. The agent must have spilled every secret he’d ever held. While the poison slowly worked its way through his system, he’d spent what felt like hours reiterating every last thing he had ever memorized from command level codes to NSA covers in Kabul and a multiplication table that seemed to have caused him some headaches in first grade. If Chuck had bothered listening, he thought idly, and if General Beckman ever learned about it, she’d carter him off to Laszlo’s bunker and never let him leave it again.
He wondered what it would be like to feel a man dying under his hands.
Chuck leaned his head against the wall behind him, closing his eyes. Being a spy wasn’t all that it was made out to be.
At first, the distant splashing sounds didn’t even register. Only when a voice started faintly echoing through the system did he blink open his eyes again.
“Chuck! Casey! Chuck, can you hear me?”
“...that bitch of a raven broke my car...” Casey muttered.
Chuck stumbled when he rushed up, trying to get upright onto numb thighs without dropping the spy’s head. “I’m here!” He felt inexplicably hoarse, having to clear his voice. “I’m here! Sarah, we’re here!” Laughter bubbled up in his throat.
It only took a moment then for a flashlight to appear at a crossing further down the tunnel, and there was more splashing. The light was blinding him, so he noticed the second person trailing after Sarah late, but when he did, overwhelming relief flooded him. He’d never been so happy to see Devon, who flashed him a brief look for a greeting, then focused on Casey with a frown.
“How long has he been like that?”
“Do you have...”
“We have the antidote. Don’t worry about it. He’s going to be fine, Chuck.” Sarah could be reluctant about touch but she wasn’t now, placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder and giving him a tight nod. All dressed in black, she wasn’t much cleaner than him.
“Yeah, he needs to detox in a hospital,” Devon said without looking up.
“...he’s Yakuza though,” Casey said, “...they recruited him in Al Mukalla...”
“The area has been secured,” Sarah said. “I’ve already requisitioned a helicopter.”
“...I can’t tell you, General, I’ve only served with him once... Lt. Ramsey died just afterwards...”
Chuck had only been half-listening. Now, inexplicably, he flashed.
Pictures: A young black man with laughing eyes, a sniper rifle holstered on his back. And dates: January, 1977 - only two years older than him - and April, 1995, Ohio and June, 2002, Qalat, Afghanistan. More faces - familiar faces - Chuck had met that team, before they’d all died in Castle. Casey hadn’t looked all that different at the time, his scowl slightly less deep.
He must have crashed into the wall during the flash, Chuck thought in a haze; it took him a moment to understand why Sarah was at his side, anxiously looking up at him. “Chuck, are you alright? Did you just flash?”
“Sorry,” he muttered. “I’m just tired. It was a very long day.”
She gave him a suspicious look but let it go, turning to Devon who seemed to have administered the antidote, seeing as Casey was asleep, and Devon’s grimace mostly seemed to just be a statement about the crap he was kneeling in.
Lt. Clarence Ramsey - Special Forces - had died in an explosion close to Qalat on a beautiful day at the age of 25. He’d joined the team only two weeks prior. It must have been an... interesting affair.
And a very dangerous and sad one, Chuck thought with a sigh.
“Chuck, I need your help to carry him. You take his legs,” Devon said, and that at least answered the question of how they were planning on getting the heavy agent out of here.
Shaking his head to clear it, he moved to follow the order, soaked pants uncomfortably clinging to his legs. Maybe it was time to call it a night.
Fin.
Characters: Chuck, Casey, others
Pairing: It’s mostly gen with some Chuck/Casey, Casey/m
Wordcount: ~ 4700
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Rating: teen
Spoilers: slight spoilers up to S3.08
Beta: Thank you very much, millari.
Summary: John Casey is kissing his throat in a sewer while drugged. Stranger things have happened, but Chuck would have trouble naming one.
Author's note: This is for _usakeh_ who I fear was asking me for an entirely different story. Sorry about that. I went from “flu” to “drug” and from “comfort” to “But it’s Casey!” and then there was plot and stuff. Whenever I get close to the romance tropes, they hide. And when I bring up Casey, they also snicker. I shall do better with the other prompt.
Funkspiel
funkspiel = the tactic of impersonating somebody else in electronic communications; derived from German “radio play”
It had been supposed to be a simple bag job - get in, get the questionable files, get out. That hadn’t happened. Both of them were still wearing the Armani suits from earlier tonight, except blood and sewage had soaked them beyond recognition, and Chuck was breathing hard from keeping 200 pounds of John Casey upright, his heart beating wildly in his chest. Sweet-smelling sewer stench was heavy in the air, the rhythmical splashes of their steps echoing back at them from everywhere. He was praying Sarah had made it without them - ideally coming back with Special Ops - and found the antidote in time. He was praying Casey’s physique was as steely on the inside as it was on the outside, because Intersect or not, Chuck doubted there was a manual in it for treating poisoning by secret service drug without any equipment.
“Come on now, come on...” he panted, and he tried to nudge Casey, who’d gone eerily quiet, but the other man was leaning on him so heavily now that his shoulder was aching. “Stay with me, buddy, don’t black out on me again... and don’t go commando again, either, that would be nice. The last time scared the hell out of me and, and I don’t...” He ran out of air for a moment. “I don’t think I can flash when you’re clinging to me like that...”
Gazing at the other man’s face so close to his for a second - not a distance he was used to with Casey at all -, he saw that Casey’s eyes were glassy, all of his effort and focus on staying on his feet. He swayed, and Chuck hissed when the agent’s full weight crashed against him, heavy bone poking him in sensitive places.
The tip of Casey’s tongue snaked out to wet his lips - yes, definitely too close a close-up -, his face contorting in a scary mix of pain and anger. The latter was probably a statement about the situation in general. “Bartowski. I can’t go on... much farther. Make sure my head... is above water... if I black out... get the hell out... maybe you can make it on your own”
“You know that won’t happen, I...”
“You do as you’re fucking told... for a change,” Casey managed. He was slowing down, and Chuck had to adjust his speed to not drop him. He almost panicked, thinking of what had happened the last time Casey had blacked out - when the drug had kicked in - the sight of a civilian waiter with a gun wound between the eyes still vividly edged into his vision. But he meant it. He wouldn’t leave Casey behind. He wouldn’t leave Morgan or Ellie behind, he’d be damned if he wouldn’t do the same for Casey. He’d made up his mind.
“You’ll die if they find you alone like this.”
Casey smirked. “You... crap.” A hiss of pain interrupted him. Chuck lost his grip on the chunk of a man after all when Casey doubled over, lower arm pressed against his abdomen. It was hard to see in the dark of the sewers, but Chuck thought he saw sweat glistering on Casey’s face, his skin unnaturally pale. “You’ve seen what the drug does to me, Bartowski.” He started coughing. He was coughing up something, and Chuck grew cold with fear that it could be blood. Blood was bad. Blood was really bad. He knew that all without being Ellie. “I’ll be out again in a minute, and there’s no telling... where I’ll think I am once I wake up. Might be Costa Gravas with your luck.”
“It doesn’t have to be!” Chuck barely noticed that a hint of panic had crept in his voice. He threw a glance back to where they’d come from but at least he couldn’t hear anybody following them just yet. “It doesn’t have to be Costa Gravas! It, it - it could be high school! You went to high school, right?”
Casey’s grimace transformed into a smirk for a moment when he glanced at Chuck. “In that case you’d better pray for Costa Gravas, geek.”
Chuck swallowed hard. It was really hard sometimes to deal with Casey’s sense of humor. Especially in situations of mortal danger when Sarah should be showing up right about now with the antidote, except she wasn’t.
Plaintext Casey had called the drug before he’d been so out of it that he resorted to unfunny jokes. The MI-6 had invented it. The Ring had stolen it. It was an interrogation drug, meant to derive classified information from a spy in a very simple way - by confusing them enough to make them think they were at a place in their timeline before it had been classified. No use for it in most situations, but if it was a match, Plaintext raised the Ghost of Christmas Past.
After Casey had caught the dart that had been meant for Chuck - of course -, they’d had just enough time for Sarah to scream “Run!” before Casey’s eyes had started glazing over, and then... Chuck wasn’t entirely sure where and when exactly Casey had thought he had been, but it had been at a place full of people Casey really didn’t like. The only things that had saved Chuck had been... well, the fact that the grenade Casey had thrown at him actually had been a bottle of Mountain Dew, and a very big yellow couch.
His breath calming down slowly, Chuck ignored Casey’s eye roll and followed the agent’s example in sliding down the wall on the other side of the tunnel until he came to sit on a small stone ledge. His feet were still in the sewage - mostly just water in this part of the tunnels, thank God - but Chuck had stopped noticing and caring. He wanted Sarah to be here, for once just for the simple reason that she would know what to do. Same went for Ellie and Devon, really, and he wondered if Awesome would agree to liberate some drugs for him from the hospital. Or maybe he could requisition them? You never knew when you might need it. If Casey should ever pull a Wolverine and attack him again, a sedative would be really helpful.
Chuck cleared his voice. Hunched over and growing paler by the minute, Casey was looking like death warmed over. It was obvious that he wasn’t going any further. “So,” he tried to diffuse the tension. “Anything you want to warn me about while you still can? Uhm, any special times in your biography I should be aware of?”
Casey growled.
Chuck forced some cheer into his voice. “Did you seal any annoying generals in a wall? Anyone’s wife you shouldn’t have kissed...”
“Shut up or I won’t need a flashback to hurt you,” Casey managed. Chuck smirked.
“I won’t leave you alone here,” he said after a moment of silence, quieter, more serious, because he meant it. The Ring owned the place above them, and yes, he could fight his way through the perimeter on his own - but once he emerged from the sewer system, the cameras would spot him, and operatives would start swarming the place in search for his partner. Sarah had said she’d be back. And she would be.
Casey pressed his lips together. “Just get the hell out before it’s too late.”
But he was trembling now, Chuck noticed with alarm, the hand that had been casually resting on his knee now clutching the fabric of his pants. And it was too dark to see more than the silhouette of Casey’s other hand, but he could see fingers twitching, a nervous gesture that was definitely directed towards where Casey’s holster should be. Thank God it was empty now. Sarah had stripped him off his weaponry, although she’d barely been able to contain him before. Chuck wasn’t sure she could have. Usually he’d say that everybody could be defeated, especially by Sarah - but the open panic he had seen in Casey’s eyes when he thought he was escaping from God knew where...
He knew Casey had been tortured by terrorists at least once. It was one of the things Chuck wouldn’t, couldn’t think about if he wanted to survive his new life without losing his mind.
A thud pushed him out of his thoughts and his head snapped up to see Casey had rammed his fist against the tunnel wall behind him, hard enough it had to bleed.
“Casey,” he said. “Casey, are you alright?”
But this time, Casey didn’t answer. Trying to swallow down a sudden surge of anxiety, Chuck picked himself up to crouch down next to the humongous man. “Casey?” he asked again, searching Casey’s face. His eyes were closed now, but his expression was one of distress, his breath irregular and hitched, his lips pressed together. His only response was a grunt, and he rolled his head back to lean against the dirty wall. Chuck muttered a cuss under his breath, reaching out to touch Casey’s shoulder and pausing mid-movement. He grimaced. The two of them might have worked together for two years - okay, Casey had been saving his ass for two years, more accurately - but Casey always kept a healthy manly distance.
But then again, it was not the time to be squeamish. “Casey,” Chuck repeated, as bold as he could, shaking the other man’s upper arm - good God, was that all muscle? “Casey, you have to listen to me. Listen to my voice. I’m Chuck Bartowski. We are in Burbank, in the sewers, which I realize is not the nicest part of Burbank but it still is where I need you to stay, okay? You’re a little bit fuzzy right now, but Sarah is going to find us with the antidote in no time.” Assuming she managed to take out a whole assortment of Ring operatives with nothing but one knife and Casey’s sniper. But, hey, Sarah was as competent as she was attractive and Casey didn’t have to worry about that now...
“Clarence?” Casey muttered, not opening his eyes and okay, that was not good because that wasn’t Chuck’s name but it could also be worse. Casey could have growled “Goya!” instead.
“No,” Chuck said more patiently than he felt. “Casey, I’m Chuck.”
“’ve told you the name is Alex,” Casey muttered. “Stop being a twat and sit down.”
Chuck’s eyes widened. Nervously, he looked back down the tunnel but it was quiet now, only the occasional drop of water to be heard. No Special Ring Ops anywhere in sight. He’d started feeling calmer within the last couple of minutes, he noticed - they would have shown up at this point if they’d ever been close. But they seemed to be safe down here. He could sit this one out, assuming Sarah made it before the drug started poisoning Casey for good. And assuming Casey didn’t take him for a Baath terrorist.
Chuck hadn’t ever heard of an Iraqi called Clarence, though, and he strongly doubted Casey would ever offer a terrorist his real name. Casey wouldn’t even offer his mother his real name. Some weeks had passed since Chuck had learned it, and John Casey was still firmly “John Casey” in his head. The man did have a dead body sealed in a wall, and their name was Alex Coburn. Except when he was drugged.
...oh.
Endless possibilities unreeled in Chuck’s head with the speed of a flash. Oh.
There was a pause.
“Okay,” he said slowly, making sure to touch Casey’s shoulder with his when he followed up on it by sitting down, so that the other man would know it was true. “This is Clarence. Sitting next to you. Alex.”
There was just no chance in hell he’d let go of this unique opportunity to learn something real about Casey.
Chances were they’d die and nobody would ever care that he had, anyway.
Casey, eyes still closed, relaxed visibly when he felt Chuck next to himself. There was a slight frown on his face, but an average Casey frown, not a death and mayhem one, the pain from before apparently gone now that the drug had kicked in. The spy had sort of slumped into himself, taking deeper breaths that made his whole chest rise and fall. Giving him a cautious side-glance, Chuck was startled to see that Casey looked... younger. Lines on his face that were just always there had vanished.
He was trying to make up his mind about what to say in order to get something interesting out of Casey when Casey opened his mouth again. His voice was a mutter, but lucid.
“I think they’re gone.”
“Yeah,” Chuck alias Clarence took a merry short in the dark, “I think, I think they are.”
Casey snorted. “One hell of a night. Didn’t think you’d make it, won’t lie.”
“Uhm, well, you know me.”
“I told you I wouldn’t do it again.”
Chuck paused carefully to make up his mind, wondering what Casey was talking about, what place and time he thought he was in, and if the drug would even make him coherent, or make him babble instead the way hallucinogens would. It was hard to tell from before - there was no way of knowing if Casey had been shooting people coherently back in the mansion.
“Uhm,” he said.
Then he started because something was suddenly grabbing his hand, formerly resting between them in the dirt, and strong long fingers interlaced with his, squeezing so hard it hurt. Oh, right - Casey had taken his hand, Casey style.
“I can’t, alright?” Casey said grudgingly. “This... You’re just a kid. You don’t get...”
“Ca... Alex...”
“An agent can’t have this anyway.”
The spy’s words were suddenly very clear and loud in the dark, and before Chuck could react, Casey had turned around in a motion too fast for a guy this big, suddenly looming over him with his eyes glittering in the dark, one hand pressed against the wall next to Chuck’s head, searching his face. Adrenaline rushed through Chuck when his instincts took note of the fact that he was suddenly caged, the other man uncomfortably close.
It took all his self-control to not flinch away; his body went stiff anyway, a well-aimed Mountain Dew gone grenade and a dead waiter suddenly back in his mind.
Casey’s face was so close to his that Chuck could feel the breath on his own skin, a cloud of body heat and eau-de-Cologne enveloping him, almost faded this late at night but sharp against the stench of sewage.
“Casey...” It was a tiny girlish whimper of alarm.
Casey lowered his head, hovering above Chuck’s neck and Chuck involuntarily shuddered when the sensitive skin of his throat was graced with exhaled air. It was a good thing he wasn’t afraid, he thought with a swallow. And it was true in a way - for all of Casey’s very real and very disturbing love for high-duty explosives, he’d stopped fearing the agent even before it had been wise to do so. He had Casey’s personal number, after all. Thinking of a horrible wedding gone wrong, an eliminated team, he was quite positive there weren’t a lot of people left who could say that about themselves.
Considering the current situation though, another one of them was an agent called Clarence.
A unexpected suspicion suddenly started dawning on Chuck, prompted by skin almost touching skin and too much eery calm emanating from a man he knew to be angry by default. He didn’t have direct proof but it was one of these things that just clicked. Casey hadn’t even been like that with Ilsa Trinchina. Not even remotely so.
Forget the skeletons. Casey had one hell of a lot more in the closet than just that. Clarence was so not an Iraqi.
A nervous, tight tingle started building in the pit of Chuck’s stomach.
He cleared his voice, his instincts switching on deflect.
“Alex...”
“I said don’t do that to me,” Casey managed, but there was not threat in his voice - just so much desperation and pain that it sounded like his throat was closing up - and before Chuck could move, Casey had bent forward, his lips brushing Chuck’s neck.
Chuck whimpered, holding perfectly still despite the shudder the touch prompted mechanically. His mind was running faster than even on a mission, than in a flash. A massive agent was sexually assaulting him in a sewer while drugged - John Casey liked men - Please, Ellie, I really need you now... - There had to be a way to make him stop - John Casey liked men - if Chuck ever asked him about this, Casey wouldn’t even be allowed to tell.
With another sudden crystal-clear insight Chuck realized that John Casey would never risk his career - his life - if he was merley bi, or giving in to a whim - if he had a choice.
Oh my God.
And through all this, his body was still firmly frozen in place. Fingers were gliding down his torso, barely touching, and his throat was lathered with soft, lingering kisses. Only now did Chuck gain a chance to notice that... well, truly, he’d never imagined Casey having sex and it had never been a thing he’d wanted to imagine before. But if he had done so, he would have imagined something... rough. Spy-like. With handcuffs. Instead... A more insistent kiss was placed behind his ear, teeth nibbling softly, and Chuck had to close his eyes and take a deep breath to clear his head. Wow. Holy mother of. Casey was gay - again, what! And Casey was touching him like... like... like how Chuck had seem him touch his Crown Vic.
All at once, the fear left Chuck, because this was still the man he knew. This was Casey. Casey drugged, not himself, and showing Chuck something that he could never ever afford to let anybody witness. But Chuck meant him no harm, and so this wasn’t complex.
First order of business, make the man stop.
“Alex,” Chuck said, reaching out to take the agent by his shoulders. “Alex, look at me.”
Casey - no, Alex Coburn - let go of his throat immediately, the steadying palm gone from his lower back like it had never been there. He retreated far enough to be able to shoot Chuck a searching question, his face still deeply conflicted.
Chuck cleared his voice. “Alex,” he repeated. His voice was flipping slightly, the words not coming easily. If Clarence had ever done the same - and Chuck, feeling a sudden, uncommon, unexpected protective instinct, certainly hoped he’d at least considered it because otherwise Chuck might have to search for the rat and flash his ass off -, if Clarence had ever done the same, it probably hadn’t been easy for him either, although the situation was quite different now. Chuck cleared his voice. “Alex, you’re right. I’m sorry I didn’t listen before. We shouldn’t be doing this.”
The interesting thing about Casey’s face, Chuck had noticed in the past, was how it was constantly in motion. Most of the time, it looked furious or focused or both, considering both of these were Casey’s ruling emotions. He even looked like that when he was hungry, or bored, or selling a kitchen appliance to a tiny Chinese woman. So it twisted something in Chuck’s gut to see it changing from utter openness to perfect cautious stillness.
“I’m glad you’re coming to your senses.” It was snark. With the slightest unreadable twist.
Chuck wondered how the real memory had played out.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
“I...” Casey paused, his face twisting before he looked away.
“It’s for the best,” Chuck said, feeling like he was still saying “I’m sorry.” He never would have thought he could feel so much pity for this man. He never would have thought he’d feel sorry for stopping Casey from kissing him.
“Not a nitwit after all,” Casey said.
Chuck looked away. Casey was still hovering above him closely, like he’d forgotten to move, and Chuck didn’t want to see the emotions fighting it out on his face. He couldn’t quite get himself to feel guilty about setting Casey up in the first place - Plaintext would have made the memory play out either way, and his curiosity had started winning out above all else long before Bryce cheated him out of Stanford. But he knew he had intruded on something deeply private - illegally private -, and all things private were guarded by Casey with Heckler & Koch 9mm MP-5 SMGs. If Sarah ever brought the antidote down here, Chuck still hoped for Casey that he’d forget what had happened under the influence. There was no way of knowing how he’d react.
Now though there was no antidote, without which Casey would eventually die in pain - and as it looked like, also in sewage.
It had been cool down here before, but the body heat exchanged had heated up the air between them, making Chuck feel strangely relaxed about a proximity that had formerly constituted a threat. It suddenly felt right - just at this moment, he was a part of Alex Coburn’s life; he should be close to it physically, too. Thinking of breath brushing against his throat, careful lips touching skin, he even felt a pleasant tingle of arousal at the memory, no matter that he was firmly straight. It didn’t bother him. He’d left behind the sexual hang-ups in Stanford, when his first roommate started changing into a woman.
Movement in the corner of his eye made him look up: Casey had turned to search his - Clarence’s - face again. Strangely, Chuck knew immediately what was about to happen. Much more so than Casey, this slightly younger Alex Coburn was an open book, no walls in sight.
Chuck would have had enough time to deflect, to get up and walk away even or to simply say no, but suddenly, he didn’t want to. When Alex moved, Chuck reached out to put his hand on the back of the agent’s neck and draw him down.
It was ridiculous how soft the man’s lips felt - like he was taking infinite care not to hurt somebody more breakable than him. His chin scratched against Chuck’s, and there was the eau-de-Cologne again, keeping Chuck emphatically aware of the fact that he was kissing a man. He was kissing a man. He was kissing a man in a sewer, and he was reaching out automatically to draw Alex... Casey... John closer while John did the same. It was a strangely snuggly position. Plus, there were soft lips and tongue - oh. Chuck made a noise of surprise, this time in a good way.
He was breathing hard when Casey pulled away, pressing a kiss on his forehead, his cheek, and abruptly setting to get up.
“One of us needs to transfer out of here ASAP,” he said without looking at Chuck.
It took Chuck a moment to orient himself, to get up. His knees had been drawn to his chest, and he felt cramped - especially, embarrassingly so in the area of his crotch. Casey, he thought. Casey, huh. Interesting. Who would have thought.
What had he...? Right. “I’m taking care of it,” he said, as steady as he could manage.
Casey looked down the tunnel - towards the... yard or tents or whatever, wherever he thought they were. His hand was curled up in a fist. It was obvious he was about to leave. Not a man of big goodbyes, then, at least not the verbal kind - Chuck involuntarily touched the wetness on his lips with the tip of his tongue. Surprisingly, Casey wasn’t all that bad with the other kind.
It had been a known fact since Carina that Casey let his guard down fairly easily in the sex department - although Chuck obviously would now have to reconsider how Carina, and Ilsa, fit into the picture that was Casey. He couldn’t allow him to walk away, anyway.
He didn’t even need to flash, he’d done this before - coming up from behind, his elbow sharply connecting with collarbone and pressure point. There was nothing but a slight “Oomph,” and Casey went down with an unspectacular slump. Ready, Chuck managed to catch him, making sure the spy’s head stayed above water when he put him down.
---
He was sitting with the agent’s head on his lap, a comforting hand on his shoulder whenever Casey twisted, his face covered with sweat, quietly talking to himself in his delirium. The sewage had soaked his formerly fancy Armani pants up to his knees, but he was long beyond noticing the smell, or the spongy things squishing under his feet.
Sarah would come. He knew she’d come. He couldn’t leave him now.
“...wouldn’t tell you even if you cut off my balls,” Casey muttered. Then he broke into a string of what was possibly Japanese. Chuck squished his shoulder.
Plaintext was good stuff. The agent must have spilled every secret he’d ever held. While the poison slowly worked its way through his system, he’d spent what felt like hours reiterating every last thing he had ever memorized from command level codes to NSA covers in Kabul and a multiplication table that seemed to have caused him some headaches in first grade. If Chuck had bothered listening, he thought idly, and if General Beckman ever learned about it, she’d carter him off to Laszlo’s bunker and never let him leave it again.
He wondered what it would be like to feel a man dying under his hands.
Chuck leaned his head against the wall behind him, closing his eyes. Being a spy wasn’t all that it was made out to be.
At first, the distant splashing sounds didn’t even register. Only when a voice started faintly echoing through the system did he blink open his eyes again.
“Chuck! Casey! Chuck, can you hear me?”
“...that bitch of a raven broke my car...” Casey muttered.
Chuck stumbled when he rushed up, trying to get upright onto numb thighs without dropping the spy’s head. “I’m here!” He felt inexplicably hoarse, having to clear his voice. “I’m here! Sarah, we’re here!” Laughter bubbled up in his throat.
It only took a moment then for a flashlight to appear at a crossing further down the tunnel, and there was more splashing. The light was blinding him, so he noticed the second person trailing after Sarah late, but when he did, overwhelming relief flooded him. He’d never been so happy to see Devon, who flashed him a brief look for a greeting, then focused on Casey with a frown.
“How long has he been like that?”
“Do you have...”
“We have the antidote. Don’t worry about it. He’s going to be fine, Chuck.” Sarah could be reluctant about touch but she wasn’t now, placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder and giving him a tight nod. All dressed in black, she wasn’t much cleaner than him.
“Yeah, he needs to detox in a hospital,” Devon said without looking up.
“...he’s Yakuza though,” Casey said, “...they recruited him in Al Mukalla...”
“The area has been secured,” Sarah said. “I’ve already requisitioned a helicopter.”
“...I can’t tell you, General, I’ve only served with him once... Lt. Ramsey died just afterwards...”
Chuck had only been half-listening. Now, inexplicably, he flashed.
Pictures: A young black man with laughing eyes, a sniper rifle holstered on his back. And dates: January, 1977 - only two years older than him - and April, 1995, Ohio and June, 2002, Qalat, Afghanistan. More faces - familiar faces - Chuck had met that team, before they’d all died in Castle. Casey hadn’t looked all that different at the time, his scowl slightly less deep.
He must have crashed into the wall during the flash, Chuck thought in a haze; it took him a moment to understand why Sarah was at his side, anxiously looking up at him. “Chuck, are you alright? Did you just flash?”
“Sorry,” he muttered. “I’m just tired. It was a very long day.”
She gave him a suspicious look but let it go, turning to Devon who seemed to have administered the antidote, seeing as Casey was asleep, and Devon’s grimace mostly seemed to just be a statement about the crap he was kneeling in.
Lt. Clarence Ramsey - Special Forces - had died in an explosion close to Qalat on a beautiful day at the age of 25. He’d joined the team only two weeks prior. It must have been an... interesting affair.
And a very dangerous and sad one, Chuck thought with a sigh.
“Chuck, I need your help to carry him. You take his legs,” Devon said, and that at least answered the question of how they were planning on getting the heavy agent out of here.
Shaking his head to clear it, he moved to follow the order, soaked pants uncomfortably clinging to his legs. Maybe it was time to call it a night.
Fin.