fic: Is This Real?
Silence permeated Castle. Chuck had left to go back to work, and Carina had gone to visit with her mark, leaving Sarah and Casey alone to their thoughts and their work. It wasn’t as if they generally talked all that much anyway. Both agents were people of few words, but even so, their respective minds were weighted down to the point that they spoke even less than normal.
“I’m not that old, ya know?” Casey asked, finally breaking the silence.
Sarah laughed to herself. “Coulda fooled me,” she said, not even looking up from her notes.
“No, seriously. Yeah, I’m experienced, but it’s not as if I’m a grandpa or anything,” he added indignantly.
“No,” Sarah said. “Me neither. To be a grandparent, you’d have to have kids,” she added sadly.
Where the hell had that come from? Her tone was a little too wistful for it to just be an offhand comment, but Casey, for the life of him didn’t know where that was coming from.
“What’re you playin’ at, Walker?” Casey growled, his gruff question belying the true concern he felt.
Sarah sighed. “It’s just…” She stopped, put down the papers she was reading and finally looked at her partner. The emotion she showed in her expression made Casey a little uncomfortable. It wasn’t something he was accustomed to from his CIA counterpart, her being all weepy and needy in front of him. But he knew where her emotional frustration generally stemmed from.
“It’s Bartowski, isn’t it?” he asked, his voice softer than normal.
“No!” Sarah said, a little too quickly for it to be the truth. “Well, yes and no.”
“Want to be a little more vague?” Casey asked sarcastically.
Sarah sighed once again. “Casey, if I tell you something, it stays between us, right?”
Casey studied her for a moment, trying to judge whether or not he could trust her. But if he couldn’t trust the person that had his back for the past two years, the person whose back he’d had, then who could he trust?
“I keep secrets for a living,” he finally answered.
“When Chuck was training,” she began, then paused, seeming to search for the right words. “I was going to run with him again. We had a plan, and we had everything set up. He agreed to run with me. I was going to get a chance to be normal. To be a real person,” she finished, almost in a whisper.
“What stopped ‘ya?” he asked, intrigued by what he was learning.
“Chuck,” Sarah answered simply.
“Bartowski? He get cold feet on ‘ya?”
“Maybe,” Sarah said. “I don’t know. All of a sudden, he was all, ‘Oh, I want to be a spy’, and there I was, left holding the bag. Literally.”
“So what’s stopping ‘ya from leaving now?” Casey asked.
“I don’t know,” Sarah said, staring off, somewhere beyond Casey. “I guess I just figured something out.”
“That is?”
“I can’t do it,” she answered. “I can’t be normal. I can’t be real. This - this spy stuff, it’s all I know anything about. It’s the only thing I can do. And even if I did want to leave, and even if I did find some guy, and have a normal relationship, and a normal family, maybe kids, it still wouldn’t be real. Whoever he was, he’d never understand me. He’d never understand the things I’ve done, and I could never tell him. Even if it was Chuck, he’d never understand.”
As her little speech continued, Casey could see the emotion grow within her. She was getting more and more worked up with every word. By the time she finished, she spoke in a hushed tone, and Casey could tell that she was fighting back tears.
“Hey,” Casey said, walking over an placing a comforting hand on her shoulder. “You don’t have to be normal to be happy. Hell, normal sounds kinda boring.”
“But it’s real!” Sarah groaned.
Casey didn’t know what to do. Consoling an inconsolable woman, much less one that could conceivably take him in a fair fight wasn’t exactly something he studied during his training. And he was honestly out of words. He didn’t keep count, but he was pretty sure he’d reached he quota on talking for the day. So he did the only thing he could think of to do: he kissed her.
Sarah tensed up as soon as his lips met hers. She squirmed, trying to get away from him, but Casey grabbed her by the shoulders and held her in place. But then, she seemed to understand. She seemed to accept what he was offering, and she kissed him back, relaxing into his embrace.
After a few moments, Sarah pulled back.
“Casey,” she said, short of breath.
“Yeah?” he answered.
“I, well, you know who I am. What I am. I just finished up a mission that had me screwing a guy for three months. I’m not clean,” she said in a panic.
“I know. I was there, and I don’t care. I understand, you did what you had to do, and I’m proud of you,” he explained as if it was no big deal.
Then he leaned in to kiss her again, but Sarah still pushed him away. She looked into his eyes, and Casey couldn’t help but to notice that she’d never looked more vulnerable. Not in front of him.
“Casey?”
“Yeah?” he asked, a little impatiently.
“Is this real?” she asked, her voice sounding almost like a scared little girl.
Casey thought about his answer for a moment. He wasn’t going to offer her a marriage, or a family, or hell, even a true relationship. He wasn’t built for that type of thing. He was a spy. But so was she, and normal wasn’t really in their DNA. But was it real? Were his feelings for her real?
“Yeah Sarah,” he said, using her first name as he so rarely did. “This is real.”
Sarah’s forehead creased just momentarily as she seemed to evaluate his words. Then she smiled. A big beautiful smile. “I’m glad,” she said. Then: “And I don’t think you’re old.”
Casey grunted through a chuckle that was rising in his throat. Then smiling, he kissed her again.