Chuck fic: "Poke"
Title: Poke
Pairings: Chuck/Casey - established relationship
Characters: Chuck, Casey, Sarah, Devon, Morgan
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: going AU shortly before the S3 finale, disregarding everything that came afterwards blatantly, and set in an alternate S4, or possible S5 (I haven't seen the real S4 yet)
Wordcount: ~7800 words
Summary: "It's not that the relationship isn't working. It's just." Chuck grimaces in desperation. "John never wants to try anything out. Me, I have lots of ideas. Lots and lots of ideas. Not on a Jeff level of kink, if you know what I mean," he hurries to add. "But still kink. There should be kink." When Chuck unveils the mystery of his lover's sexual interests, there's an unexpected problem: He doesn't share them. He doesn't get them. And he doesn't want them. At all.
Beta: millari who let me profit from her expertise in all the things I don't write a lot, such as the fluff, the sex, and the relationship issues.
Author's Note: This story involves a medical sex / doctor play kink. I had been contemplating whether I should point that out up front or not, but decided to do it for potential squickiness. However, I feel that warning for the unusual kinkiness might result in people skipping on the fic who might otherwise really enjoy it, because in a way, I wrote the fic for people who don't have the kink rather than for the ones who're sold on it in any case.
The first thing Chuck does is ask Sarah for advice during a fake date. It's probably not the smartest thing he's ever done, but at least there is food while he makes a fool of himself.
"It's not that our sex life isn't good the way it is, because it really, really is," he says, leaning forward, frowning, and pausing to carefully move the candelabra out of the way before focusing back on her. "It's an excellent sex life. Very, very satisfying. We have orgasms all the time. In bed, on the couch... definitely on the couch... in the shower..."
"That's nice," Sarah says. "More than I ever wanted to know, but nice."
"Right," Chuck says, smiling at the maitre d' in distraction when he passes by. "Sorry. So it's not that it's not working. It's just." He grimaces in desperation. "He never wants to try anything out. Me, I have lots of ideas. Lots and lots of ideas. Not on a Jeff level of kink, if you know what I mean," he hurries to add. "But still kink. There could be kink."
Sarah, expertly dissecting her steamed lobster, looks up with an expression like she'd rather not. "So you're saying that John doesn't like kink."
Chuck pauses. "Not exactly," he admits. "He's always happy to go along, it seems, which, you know, I appreciate. A lot." He feels his shoulders slump down. "He just never has any ideas of his own."
It's a wonderful evening. A string quartet is playing in a corner, and waiters are hurrying through the labyrinth of tables to fulfill your wishes before you can even think to make them. It's their fifth fake anniversary. People will be expecting pictures.
It was most likely a mistake to bring this up with his fake girlfriend, but his only other options are his sister and Morgan and just - no.
He gives Sarah a pained smile when she looks at him long and hard to let him know that she has never wanted to have this conversation, and also she can throw a knife faster than he can flash, just in case he forgot.
"Shouldn't he have kinks?" he asks, determined to get it over with. "Everybody has kinks, don't they? It doesn't have to be wild. Just... some tying up or toys or spanking. I'd let him spank me." He pauses. "I could spank him," he adds, considering that new thought and deciding that it isn't bad. "There have to be kinks," he repeats rather lamely.
Sarah is coughing when she puts down the glass.
Then she pushes away her plate, folds her hands on the table and sighs. "Chuck," she says, not unkindly now. "Have you considered that Casey, as a spy, might just have done and seen things that have given him a taste for the mundane?"
"I... what?" he asks, once his brain catches up.
Sarah gives her lobster a last longing glance. "I know I wouldn't want to be bound and gagged in bed," she says, making Chuck the one who blushes, because, whoa, the images there. She smirks. "It'd be too much like the work day. And you'd have to make a show of it, too, to produce knots we don't try to open by reflex." She shrugs. "Blindfolds, dominance games, strangely shaped objects... It's only so much fun if you've done it when it was for real." She gives him a hard look. "He's a spy," she says. "Things have happened to him. You don't get good at it it without developing some issues."
Chuck stares at her. "Are you saying my boyfriend is traumatized?" he says. There are many words he associates with John Casey, but "hurt" and any of its synonyms have yet to be added to the equation. John talks of the time he was tortured in Yemen frequently and liberally, usually to scare the rooks. As in, Morgan.
But Sarah doesn't give an inch. "We're spies," she says resolutely. "We have issues. And now, please, darling." She smiles sweetly and puts her hand on his just when the waiter arrives at their table. "Let's order the sweetest dessert they have."
---
Chuck is pretty sure that John is not traumatized. He contemplates this, leaning against his partner's kitchen sink, watching the man himself sitting at the table, engrossed in cleaning his guns. Through the door behind John, he can just make out the Reagan portrait Chuck gave him for his birthday.
John is all muscle, careful long fingers and thinly veiled aggression, which Chuck has learned to read as the man's way of relaxing. That and the bonsai, at that. So he might be looking deeply traumatized, he really might, it's true.
Though the first time they had sex, John had told him with a growl, "Hands off my balls, Bartowski," and then with a sparkle in his eyes, "Ba'ath terrorist poked at them with a hot stick once, and I'm fond of them." And that just isn't what a guy tells you if he wakes up covered in sweat from his bad past. Which John doesn't do, either.
"You know," he says, because he has talked to John about this, or rather he's talked at John, excessively, and John has even played along for a while. He's a good lover. He just, well. Doesn't ever change his opinion. Except when he said Chuck would doom all of America and then he started sleeping with him, of course, so nothing's carved in stone. "You know," Chuck repeats. "Feathers. Tickling. Some couples go for it. There's nothing dark and suggestive about feathers, and..."
"Chuck," John says pleasantly without looking up. "Shut up."
Right. Because the more things change.
---
John makes up for it the following night by encouraging Chuck to lay back on the bed, and recounting a fantasy he had of fucking Chuck on a counter the last time he stayed in the surveillance car. John's low voice in his ear and his hand on his dick, Chuck reaches climax within minutes. It's great, as he told Sarah, it's satisfying - god, it's satisfying - but as he also told her, that isn't the problem. The problem is that it's about Chuck, and about pressing Chuck's buttons, which John has long since excelled at. If Chuck was a violin, John would be Niccolo Paganini, except not dead in Italy.
And it's not that Chuck doesn't know some buttons to push on his own. That is, he knows the ones he can find out without being told. He knows that playing with John's nipples does pretty much nothing for him, but there's a spot at the crook of his neck that can be used to drive him crazy. He knows stroking along the edge of John's loins with his thumb makes him grow almost hard, and he can do that blow job thing where he twists his tongue just so to make him grunt. He knows to stay alert in case John punches the sheet when coming - and that's a punch by a guy who can knock you right out -, and singing romantic 70's songs in his ear makes him inexplicably horny, probably because it makes him chuckle despite himself.
Chuck knows all that. But if he hadn't told John to do more of that dirty talk thing, John probably wouldn't have guessed - or maybe he would have, maybe he learned in seduction school, which would explain a lot. But he wouldn't have known of Chuck's long-lasting fantasy of having sex in his old high school gym - god, that was fun -, and he definitely wouldn't have known that quite a lot of Chuck's masturbation habits evolve around Casey in full dress. Chuck credits him highly for the fact that he didn't even complain about the stains on his Medal of Honor, even if he blanched at the sight.
And Chuck wants to know these things about John, too. He gets that John doesn't do I-statements. He gets that the emotions John is best at expressing are anger, focus and, on special occasions, quiet, manly angst. He gets all that, and it's okay, because Chuck talks enough for the two of them. And considering Sarah even refused to tell him her name until she couldn't, he can put it in perspective.
But he still wants to make John whimper beyond words the way John made him whimper in the gym, completely coming loose.
"Tell me something," Chuck says two days later with his arms around John in the shower, slick wet skin rubbing against his. "I need your expert opinion as a spy. If you really wanted to know something about a friend, but your friend won't tell and it isn't written down... and you don't want to threaten or drug him," he adds after a thoughtful pause, because this is still John. "What would you do?"
He feels John shrug, since the other man is distracted already, pressing him against the wall and searching his throat for a good place to kiss. "Breaking and entering isn't out?" he says. "Everything can be a clue. Search his place. You're a spy. Act the part." His smirk tickles Chuck's skin. "It's all a matter of a high enough cost-benefit ratio."
It's better advice than Sarah has offered, and since this conversation is still not going to happen with Ellie and Morgan, Chuck decides to take it.
---
The opportunity presents itself just two days later when Big Mike orders John to work late at the store. It's punishment for prolonged yoghurt sessions, and also the other penitent is Lester, who everybody knows works with double efficiency if John is there to glare at his back.
It isn't strictly breaking and entering since picking the lock is actually what John expects of Chuck if Chuck arrives while John is asleep.
There are cameras running in John's absence, of course, and though the foot sensors are attuned to him, Chuck still makes a point of looking around with confusion and muttering, "Now where did I put the damn thing?"
He knows John would consider gay material to be potentially compromising, but Chuck also knows all the good hiding spots at this juncture. He sweeps the living room shortly, but leaves it be in favor of the bedroom, a much more likely target. The safe behind Ronald Reagan only contains the emergency stash, anyway.
He finds nothing in the back of the drawer, in the small safe under the desk, and in the secret drawer of the nightstand - although he guessed up front that this close to the bed would be too obvious a spot.
It's the bathroom cabinet that reveals a second sheathing. When Chuck turns the water tap to the left and hums the opening of the national anthem, it opens up, revealing a small assortment of books and DVDs on a shelf.
The first one is season one of The Hulk, which shouldn't amuse him as much as it does.
Again, amusingly, two of the books are romantic novels, albeit gay ones. "John, John... you're so full of surprises," he mutters, suppressing a chuckle when putting them away. He can just imagine how John would claim they were a gift, or possibly point out their artistic values, revealing a ridiculously broad knowledge of literature, because with him, you never know.
The other books turn out to be photobooks, aesthetically staged black-and-white art of young dark-haired men with lithe frames and slender shoulders. They make Chuck pause, prompting a strangely flattered smile because even he can recognize the type, and John really thinks Chuck can measure up to that? But while he might have to borrow those books the official way to look at them in depth, they're also all-around kink-free.
Chuck is starting to lose hope when reaching for the stash of DVDs.
"What the hell?" he mutters, looking through them with wide eyes. Most of them are all the same, straightforward gay porn - anal, oral, the usual shebang. So John likes younger men. Chuck knew that before, and also, what man a certain age doesn't? And apparently, he really has a thing for the sex merchandise made in Germany. But there are two or three that are about something entirely different, definitely a kink just like expected, but unfortunately it's one foreign to Chuck.
He picks one randomly and blankly scans the cover of Intime Inspektionen No. 03, on which a guy is tied to a GYN chair - an identification gracefully provided by a flash, because Chuck would surely not recognize such chairs without the Intersect. There's something up his ass that Chuck, with growing horror, thinks has to have to do with an enema.
Oh stars and gartlers. John's into medical sex.
---
So, curiosity killed the cat.
Or so Chuck can't help thinking for the next two hours or so. After that, he cools off fast, realizing that the proverb doesn't match the situation after all, because he didn't learn more than he wanted to know. No, given the opportunity to travel back in time, he doesn't see how he would stop himself from looking up John's kinks. Because it's still John. And it's still his kinks. And Chuck still wants to know.
He's put the kinky pornos back on the hidden shelf and left the apartment muttering about how he "must have left it at Sarah's." Thus assured of his cover, he engages in some hacking to make sure the NSA and CIA won't trace his internet connection - he's taken to downloading his porn by borrowing his neighbor's connection on general principle, anyway. Then he commits an evening to studying the strange and obscure world that apparently is his lover's secret preference.
He convinces himself that it's not so much because John is NSA, it's rather just because he's from a different generation. Each generation their kinks, he's heard that somewhere. Things that look ominous to him might suddenly be perfectly common if you were born in 1965 in Utah.
He's always thought that 1965 in Utah explains one hell of a lot about John Casey, anyway.
---
It's a boring night of surveillance, the sushi long eaten and the coca cola cans dried up. John and Morgan are inside the building, posing as a cleaning staff extra and a pool billiard pro. Sarah and Chuck are in the van, it being yet another practice run for Morgan, and she is focusing on the monitors, listening to new intel coming in, while Chuck is watching her thoughtfully.
His fingers sneak to the controls, innocently disabling their side of the connection. "So I've been thinking about what you said about John and sex."
"And here I am wishing already that I'd never done so."
Chuck smirks, folding his arms in front of his chest. Sarah's eyes are still primed on the monitors. If there's one thing he's learned after five years of spy work, it's that you just have to talk over their heads. They don't in actuality mind, and it makes at least one of them horny.
"I think you're wrong," he said. "I think John has a kink, after all."
"Please stop right there."
"So now that I know the kink, the question is, what does he like about it? I get what you said before, I really do. Once somebody ties you up for real, you have no interest in repeating it for fun. So I guess now I know a situation of coercion he hasn't been in," he muses aloud, ignoring Sarah's shudder. "But how can I make it work for him if I don't get what part of it gets him off?"
Sarah gives him a look. "Have you considered asking Casey that question?"
"Are you kidding?" Chuck feels a little offended. "He doesn't even know I broke into his place to get the intel."
His fellow spy doesn't dignify that one with an answer, which is fair enough, but her eyes speak volumes. She takes great care to turn them back to the feeds.
"It's always all psychological, right?" he tries. "People want control in bed because their bosses have their asses in real life all the time." And doesn't that just say terrible things for absolutely every last one of his colleagues at the Buy More. "They like spanking because they've never learned to associate it with bad things..."
"They want sex in public places because they've got adrenaline deficiency," Sarah throws in dryly. "Maybe Casey needs to go on more missions."
Chuck rolls his eyes at her. "I'm just saying," he says. "If you have a really... really special kink, there's got to be a reason for it."
"Yes," Sarah agrees easily. "And as you're absolutely not about to tell me about John's, I won't be able to help you figure it out... Watch that." Growing alert, her eyes become trained on the image of Morgan mopping his way to the target's office door. "Contact Casey, I'm on Morgan."
As much as Chuck hates to admit it, Sarah does have a point. He just needs more intel.
---
"So, Devon," Chuck says, leaning at the kitchen counter - his sister's this time - and watching Awesome do his hundredth or so sit-up this fine day. "Imagine you have a patient. He has a terrible medical problem. You've got a list of all the symptoms, you can't figure out the cause. But you have to act. What do you do?"
Awesome somehow manages to crunch his face and think this over without pausing in rapidly counting his pushes, lips moving without sound. "Conservative treatment," he says, coming up, coming up again, counting. "Treat him for the symptoms, monitor the side-effects, draw conclusions from that."
"Okay, alright," Chuck amends. "Let's say you can't treat him with medication. Uhm, because there isn't enough time." And because it would break his metaphor. This one isn't about to resolve itself by waiting it out. "What do you do?"
Without pausing his motion, Devon gives him a worried look. "I don't know, bro," he says. "Sounds like you'll just have to go in and give it a poke."
It's amazing the advice you can get without ever bringing up the real issue.
---
The more he learns about the porn, the surer Chuck grows that he can handle this, mostly because he's working really hard on convincing himself of that fact. So it's weird and obscure and involving his sister's profession - dear god, don't ever think that again. It also does nothing for Little Chuck. But it's what John likes, and Chuck will be damned if he doesn't find a way to make it work.
Still, he's relieved when he can discard of the enemas. His research indicates that there are special pornos about that, and John owns none of those, so there, it can't be a requirement. There's also a whole genre of medical instruments being used as torture devices, and Chuck discards of those a little more reluctantly. He has no wish to cause John pain, but he can't say he would have minded terribly if he could tie him down and have his evil way with him. As much as it pains him, Sarah was probably right on that account.
It doesn't take long until he gains a pretty good idea of what works for John and what doesn't. The GYN chairs so do. Patient gowns don't. And there's always the prostate exams.
How the Germans come into this, however, Chuck can't for the life of it begin to figure out. Is it the glaring lack of gowns? Is it the harsh yet alluring accents of the Doktoren? The mystery remains, and there's another conversation that is so not going to take place... no matter Morgan would probably know.
Yet, he is feeling pleased with himself. He can do this. He can do it for John. It's not gonna be weird, because there isn't any need to do the extreme fetish porno things, and even if he only manages an approximation, it'll still be sex focusing on John. Chuck will finally be able to give him something back. He'll do what Devon told him to do - go in and give it a poke.
Apparently, quite literally.
That night, Chuck dreams of drips and spatulas, which does nothing for him, but he still wakes up coming to the image of John with his dick in hand, which definitely does.
Chuck doesn't need to know why it gets John off. He's been on dozens of missions without fully understanding what the hell they were about.
Like the Cylons, he has a plan.
---
The IKEA-like box is huge and heavy, straining Chuck's shoulders when they carry it onto John's patio. There's sweat on Morgan's forehead when they set it down, but he still crunches his face at Chuck again. "It's nothing illegal, is it? Like a bazooka. Or a rocket launcher. Oh god, you didn't have some sort of Ebay mafia boss send me a rocket launcher, did you?"
"It's not a rocket launcher," Chuck assures him, trying to catch his breath.
"Because I'm just saying, man," Morgan says. "It's not like I don't get why you like the big guy, except for, y'know, the glaring lack of womanly features. He's got a little something to him with all that muscle and the scary grunts, right? But, buddy, I'm just really not sure I want to know what kind of gift for him comes in a really heavy box."
"Well, I hate to say it, Morgan, but - don't ask, don't get the answer you'd hate?"
"Holy beard of Sauron, it is a rocket launcher."
"Yes." Chuck pulls himself up, smirking at Morgan. "I used your address to buy Casey a rocket launcher on Ebay, and the reason I didn't just requisition one through the CIA is because Sarah would have noticed and stolen it away out of greed."
"I knew it!"
Glancing at John's door, Chuck wonders how he'll get the box inside before his boyfriend comes home. And if the not-rocket launcher came with an instruction manual. He's pretty sure the Intersect won't help.
---
The big moment comes two hours and several medical engineering flashes later. The GYN chair has been erected in the middle of the room, looking intimidating in a sterile way, stirrups folded at the sides. Dressed in a lab coat and nervously clutching the stethoscope around his neck, Chuck can hear John entering the house. He takes a deep breath before turning towards the bedroom door, plastering his best anonymous smile on his face. It's just like a mission, he reminds himself, albeit an unusual and probably somewhat unconstitutional one.
"Mr. Casey!" His smile grows a little wider in a mad sort of way. "Guten Tag, Herr Casey. And there I thought you wouldn't make it in time for your appointment. If you would just take a seat, I'll be with you in a minute."
The plan was to turn around and meaningfully jingle the medical tools he has liberated from Castle's prop archive, but Chuck finds himself frozen in place. It looked all good in theory, but what if he's been wrong, and John just likes watching the weird kinky porn but not doing? Or what if he wants Chuck to be the one on the table?
Because John's face has frozen. Buy More bag still slung over his shoulder, he's looking from Chuck to... yes, the chair like he thinks the Intersect has fried Chuck's brain.
Chuck clears his voice. "Uhm," he says. "It says here ..." Noticing he isn't, in actuality, holding a clipboard, his hand snakes out to snatch one. "Aha! It says here that you've been somewhat remiss in attending your check-ups. Na so was. Oh my." He threatens to run out of air. "We'll have to be thorough to make up for the time, the time lost."
When he glances back up, John's face is not only still blank, but he's also standing a lot closer.
"Uhm," Chuck says.
"What cockamamie scheme have you come up with this time, Chuck." It's said in a low cautious voice into his ear, and John is looking right past him. A spy's cautious stance.
"Ahem. That's Carmichael, actually. Dr. Carmichael." Because no way is he using Ellie's title for this one. Do not think of Ellie. Remember we're in Germany. No Ellie in Germany. He gives John a meaningful look. "I can see from your record that you are not a friend of the annual medical examination, Colonel..." He doesn't know where that one came from, but John tenses up next to him, and not in a bad way. Not in a bad way at all. "...but it's very important for people such as yourself who keep their needs on a secret DVD shelf in the bathroom."
John's eyes flicker at him when the implications dawn. Chuck crooks his head and shoots him a question. Is this alright? Because we could just... not.
When John lowers his eyes in a motion totally uncharacteristic even when directed at superior officers, Chuck is still so surprised that he flinches. "Yes, sir," John mutters. A tense beat. Then, the correction, "Jawohl, Sir." And, very quietly, "Where do you want me?"
Holy shit, it's working.
Breathe on. Breathe on... there was a question... "Chair! The chair. Sit down, please. The, uhm, normal way to start with. If you would take off your shirt so that I can check your vitals."
Awesome sex, he reminds himself. It doesn't feel like it - or like sex at all really - but there'll be awesome sex in the end. John has done the full dress. Chuck can do the chair.
At least he's getting to touch John's very well-toned upper body, which Chuck has always had a special fondness for because it was the first thing to clue him in on his expanded sexuality.
John seems to be getting over the shock that is his modified bedroom, moving to lean against the chair as if not quite ready to yield to the proposition just yet, but willing to go along for now. His eyes flicker to the stethoscope when Chuck brandishes it, and - oh, good - there's the first trace of amusement in his face when Chuck almost drops it.
"This is only going to take a minute," Chuck says in a softer voice, appreciating how John is allowing him to stand too close during that one, his stomach muscles twitching when the cold instrument touches the skin next to a gun shot scar. He looks just a little like a Greek god. "Now breathe in. Breathe out. And breathing in again... very good."
John is holding very still, vigilant eyes on Chuck. "Everything alright, doc?" he asks in a low voice, and Chuck wonders for the hundredth time what it is that John is getting off on here. But he must be, because he's never been shy about grabbing Chuck and doing unspeakable things to him by way of a corrective action.
Chuck sure hopes he didn't get his inclinations out of seduction school. They're gonna send Chuck there eventually, albeit not during the Cold War, which might account for the language thing that John is obviously willing to go for...
"I'll have to finish the exam before we'll know." He clears his voice, unable to take his fingers off John's chest for a second. Wow again. Very nice pecs. "It's too early to say."
"Jawohl, Sir," John says easily.
This is nice, Chuck thinks, grabbing a spatula and deflecting a flash on doing tonsil surgery when looking at John's throat. Not arousing arousing, but nice. He shines a light into John's eyes, and feels for the lymph nodes behind his ears. Through all of it, John stays uncharacteristically compliant, enduring the poking and prodding with the same stoicism that he must apply at real annuals. After all, even a highly decorated officer such as John can't just knock out a doctor when impatient, only the bad guys would do that. So he allows for Chuck to stand closely, free hand resting on John's shoulder and caressing his neck, his breath hitching when Chuck 'accidentally' grazes that spot just above his belt line.
Chuck can't help but wonder if there's a note in John's medical file about staying the fuck away from his balls. There better be.
He clears his voice. "Are you taking any medication right now?"
"No, sir." It's a brash one.
"Any lasting pain from old injuries?"
"No, sir."
"Any other kind of discomfort that you need to report? Now's the time. Wouldn't want to waste any of those tax dollars by having it become a problem later in the field, nicht wahr?"
"Yessir." John pauses, calculating look on his face. And Chuck gets that at least, suddenly: It might seem squicky to go there with the military exams and the ranks, but that's just how it works in John's world. He saw his last civilian doctor when he was a teen. And John is leaning back against the chair more comfortably, granting Chuck an eyeful of all those muscles ready to be touched. Going by the glint in his eyes, he's getting really horny. "Maybe I've been having some abdominal pain. Nothing special. Somewhere along the lines of here."
His hand grazes what the Intersect insists is the lower abdominal region, while the rest of Chuck insists it's underneath his belt, and close to his cock. The message, anyway, is clear. This cue Chuck recognizes from the porn. Oh my. He really wants to go there.
"Aha. See, Colonel Casey, things like that need to be reported because they could get serious abruptly. Remember that all this is for your own health, and say so immediately the next time, verstanden? Understood? Open your belt." Trying to control his nerves, Chuck slips his hands into John's pants to apply pressure. John audibly takes a breath, chest heaving once. "Does this hurt? What about this?"
John nods, breath still ever so irregular. It's one of the most alluring sounds in Chuck's universe, making his own Johannes stir just a bit.
"How often do you masturbate, Colonel?"
"Depends on how much my boyfriend blabs at me."
Smartass. "Say on average."
"Three times a week or so."
Interesting. There's no other situation in which John would have offered up that one. Something tells Chuck it's true, too.
Maybe that's the deal, he thinks. Spies are supposed to lie, except to their doctors.
Though certainly they'd lie to German doctors, right?
Chuck's thumbs graze pubic hair. He might be discovering some of the perks here.
From the way the front of John's pants are straining, he's been hard as a rock ever since the spatula.
"Does the pain lessen after you've ejaculated?"
"Yeah." And there's a smirk dancing there in John's eyes. "That helps a lot, sir."
No matter what John still claims he thinks of Chuck's performance on missions, Chuck gives him a look to show he's not in actuality stupid. He retracts his hands abruptly. You're not gonna get that this fast, buddy. We've got a script here, and I intend on following it. "I'll have to examine you internally. It might be a problem with your prostate. These things can get very serious, fatal even, if they aren't properly taken care of by experts such as myself."
It takes focus to shut up the Intersect, which is offering to brush up on his proctology in a pained way.
Smirking, Chuck steps aside and yanks the stirrups into place. They clank ominously. John's eyes jerk there. "If you'd please undress fully."
"You really gonna use that thing?"
It's impossible to tell if it's a honest question or just role play. Chuck wavers, suddenly unsure. John has done this before, right? Many times? Right? "Well," he says in a high voice. "This is a medical examination after all and not a... a Halloween scare, Colonel... But if you'd rather not...?"
John clears his voice. "Not exactly my choice, sir."
It's so rare to see an actual unconfident expression on John's face that it makes Chuck want to reach out and touch his formidable jaw. His eyes flicker down to John's hands moving to drop his pants, and he swallows.
It's about honesty, he thinks, at least in parts. It doesn't explain the chair yet or the other ... instruments, but it's about not being supposed to lie. It's not fake.
From the way John releases a small breath, it's a relief to have his cock spring free from the constraining pants. And what a fine speciman that is.
Chuck clears his voice. His own pants are feeling rather tight from the sight. "I know it's a complicated procedure," he improvises, although it's really not according to the Intersect. "And uncomfortable physically, but it is very, very necessary if you want me to clear you for duty." For duty behind the Berlin Wall, apparently. "If you would take a seat on the chair now." His eyes roam John, all lithe and lean, sitting down on the lower end of the chair. "Now slide back and lie down... yes, like that... and put your legs up there."
Oh god. This, he thinks, his suddenly really hot. Not so much anymore in a minute when he'll get back to the more medical part, he knows, but John - his John - lithe, muscular, deadly John yielding to what looks like the most uncomfortable and violable position ever. The bad guys can't positively ever have forced him into that one during torture. John's almost too tall for the chair, abs tensing when he places his legs on the stirrups, spread wide, ass and genitals exposed.
"If you'd just wait another moment," the script Chuck has been clinging to requires him to say - in German - so he can turn and tease John by having him wait. But this sight and the incredible trust it implies forbid the notion of letting John hang in there alone. Chuck's foot moves to push his stool closer and he reaches out to pull the tray over. Stepping up between John's legs, he places his hands on John's thighs. Automatically John jerks away - an almost imperceptible defensive measure.
"Relax, Colonel," Chuck hears himself say, hands moving in soothing circles. "This is a perfectly common procedure. I have done it many times." This is not strictly true - there have been no men before John in Chuck's life, and John isn't in a mood to bottom all that much. There's one way of the Intersect coming in handy in the private life, though, and Chuck will never question why that kind of stuff is in there. "It might hurt a little later on..." Like hell it will, but the line's on the list. "But there's a protocol we have to follow here."
His hands move lower, carefully passing by John's balls to massage his ass cheeks with his thumbs, and he can feel John relaxing. The spy has closed his eyes, tense face betraying that he's all there and perfectly vigilant, taking deep breaths. His cock twitches when Chuck's thumb edges close to his sphincter.
"Yessir," he breathes belatedly, then, "Jawohl, Sir," and Chuck takes that as his cue to draw his stool underneath himself and sit down on it, reaching for the lube on the tray. He has a nice one for that, and to hell that it's a pretty big real syringe and that that should make it icky, it's hot as hell to hold open John's ass carefully and insert it to inject the lubricant inside of him. A whole body shudder runs through John, trembling all under Chuck's fingers.
Yeah, this is nice.
"I'm going to use a finger now to examine your prostate. If you would just open your legs a little wider... lift up a little? That's it. This is going to take... a couple of minutes, but I am going to have to do a full examination."
It's Chuck's turn to shudder now, because John's breath is catching, and, as Chuck's finger pushes inside of him, transforming into a small moan. He waits a moment to allow John to adjust before carefully starting to move it, wiggling it a little under the pretense of feeling for something. When he finds the prostate, rubbing the spot with the tip of his finger, each of John's breaths is accompanied by a low involuntary sound. And hell, that's hot, because Chuck has often thought that they must have taught John to keep his mouth shut during sex so as not to compromise his cover. It's a pity that he can't properly see his face from this angle.
"You may be feeling a little pressure," he sing-songs, happy with the world and the flush on his face, and the exciting sounds John is making getting louder. His legs are twitching in the stirrups.
"'m gonna come if you keep that up..."
"I beg your pardon?" That one is not on the list, but John's hips almost come off the chair.
"Nothing, sir."
Chuck grins. It's the grin of the truly and honestly sexually happy. "Now I would advise you to hold stiller if you want me to finish the job, Colonel, and to try and loosen up some more so that I can reach everything properly. I would hate to have to use a Spekulum."
John grunts - in a good way. Chuck, meanwhile, is vastly realizing that he's lying, because he wouldn't hate the speculum at all. At this rate, he's thinking he could deal with just about any device - maybe even with that weird thing he doesn't quite get that's called sounding.
Making sure not to overdo it with the prostate in case John really means it, he stops brushing against that spot quite that insistently, but reaches out to fist John's cock - "This should help you open up" - and adds another finger.
And god, John looks stunning like this, sprawled out and wide open and allowing Chuck to do these things to him even if he has to put himself into the impersonal mind frame to do so.
Maybe it's because the hospitals and doctors are what he goes back to after missions, Chuck thinks, surprised that he still can think, because now he's just focusing on getting John ready while his other hand fiddles with his own belt, reaching for his own cock - god. This is where he can let the adrenaline run out and trust that somebody else is gonna take care of whatever gun wounds and dislocated joints he brought home. It makes sense - spy version of a safe space.
He can't believe that John is letting him---
"Keep talking," John grinds out in a strained voice.
That's nothing he has to request twice. Chuck is too far gone to come up with doctoral snark, so he just starts babbling. His face has to look like during a flash when he readjust the grip on his cock. "Well, I'm, I'm afraid that this is rather serious. I'll have to ... give it ... a much closer look... and also, possibly, probably get a sample of your... ejaculate next... holy shit." He's stood up, pushing down his pants, and catching a better look at John. John is breathing hard, even when Chuck extracts his fingers, glancing at Chuck with an expression Chuck mostly knows from when he's drunk. Chuck places a hand on John's loins, unable to break contact.
John's ass is so slick that Chuck just slides home, rolling his eyes upwards to thank whatever god might be watching. "Son of a motherless..." Whatever colorful insult John came up with this time, Chuck will never know, because his voice transforms into a hiss. Chuck does personally also have trouble mastering the coherence, but John asked him - John asked him - so his mouth just keeps moving, no matter he's lost the capability to check if the words make any sense.
An overwhelmed tiny sound escaped him, because John's ass feels ridiculously tight and hot around his cock, and that will just never get old.
"Uhm, weiter so... Meine Güte... You've... almost... made it, Colonel, just a moment longer..." Probably not a long one, his brain supplies faintly... "Just remember that I'm doing this for your own good... and my good, too, quite frankly, because this is... oh god, John... Colonel, this is great." Breathing out the last one, he can feel John straining to open his legs wider despite the stirrups. The chair is clanking ominously under his thrusts, not meant to hold up against any 'examination' quite like this one. Chuck's hand is wrapping around John's leaking cock again, and he starts fisting it vigorously with his lubed hand. His other hand is on John's thigh, unable to let go. He faintly thinks he's started repeating himself - he's run out of lines - but he does not care. "I'm probably going to have to... run some more tests... when we're done here... and ask you to come back for another appointment next week... in which... I'm afraid... we're just not going to get around that speculum and some of the other... really scary instruments that I've stolen for you..."
The chair is screeching, rocking back and forth, and John - face distorted - has wrapped his hand around one of the struts so hard that his biceps are showing.
He makes a desperate sound between a moan and a grunt, and he starts coming, head thrown back, hot splatters wetting Chuck's hand and hitting John's stomach. Chuck can't but hyper focus on the sight, feeling John contract around his cock hard, seeing his face contort more. The world narrows down to that glorious feeling that has absolutely nothing to do with drips and spatulas - though, god, right now he'd recite the 2010 baseball stats if this was the result for John. It takes another couple of thrusts and he feels himself starting to come, pressing tight against John in a desperate attempt to get even deeper inside.
Breathing hard, he catches himself upon John's shoulders, hanging his head and desperately trying to come to his senses. He feels a laugh bubbling up, the kind that happens when you belatedly notice that there used to be anxiety, which has vanished. Instead, he grows aware that John has gone still underneath him, harsh heaving of his chest the only sound there is, and he clears his voice, trying to clear his head in the process as well, looking at his lover's face.
John's cheeks are flushed, sweat on his forehead, and he looks a little like he does on missions when he can't believe Chuck just pulled a ridiculously geeky stunt that miraculously hasn't left them dead.
"Uhm," Chuck manages. "Was it good for you? Because it, it was pretty good for me. Not saying that we can't improve on it the next time we do it, especially if you'll actually tell me what exactly you like about it, and which of those tools to use, but, you know, really pretty amazingly good for a first time doing anything to do with..."
"Shut up, Chuck," John says. A jerk runs through the chair when he puts one of his legs out of the stirrup, using one steely calf to pull Chuck in. He topples onto John with an "Oomph." "I'm not complaining."
Chuck smiles against John's chest serenely. It has worked, he thinks delightedly. He has circumvented the Spy Conditioning of Inconvenience, and learned something new about his lover. He's made John come loose and whimper helplessly, and John has let him, because that's what John does when Chuck proposes something new - he goes along. Because he trusts that Chuck knows what he wants, and now he's also trusted Chuck to handle what John wants. Life is great.
"So, Genosse," John says, idly stroking Chuck's neck. "What's the German all about? Needed a little Cold War flavor to get it up? I wouldn't have pecked you the type."
Chuck raises his head to give him a confused look. "Wait, your whole collection is in German. Don't tell me you aren't into the German. I thought, I thought maybe you're into the accent, I mean, it is kind of alluring in a choppy sort of way if you get over the Schindler's List associations..."
John's lips start twitching. Then he drops his head back on the stretcher, chest rumbling from soundless laughter. "They don't ID you in the German sex shops," he says. "Great place if you want to stay under the radar with the gay porn. I bought the stuff when I was stranded there for a month. Lost my tail, mailed it to a P.O.B. back home, retrieved it a year later on leave."
"Oh... well." Chuck pauses. "That's somewhat anti-climatic."
"Forget about it. No harm done, right?"
With those words, John's hand tightens around his neck to pull him into a proper kissing position. Lips on Chuck's allowing for no nonsense, Chuck yields when John takes charge in a way that's a lot more familiar and common in their relationship than the spatula sex.
Chuck makes a small sound, thinking he'd be okay capping just about anything off like that. Because there's everything that needs saying in that kiss: Thank you and I appreciate the effort and I can't wait to do it again on that really cool chair you got me when it wasn't even my birthday.
It says, I love you loud and clear, reminding Chuck that I-statements are overrated, anyway.
"Bring a thermometer next time," John says just a minute later.
Chuck smiles.
Pairings: Chuck/Casey - established relationship
Characters: Chuck, Casey, Sarah, Devon, Morgan
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: going AU shortly before the S3 finale, disregarding everything that came afterwards blatantly, and set in an alternate S4, or possible S5 (I haven't seen the real S4 yet)
Wordcount: ~7800 words
Summary: "It's not that the relationship isn't working. It's just." Chuck grimaces in desperation. "John never wants to try anything out. Me, I have lots of ideas. Lots and lots of ideas. Not on a Jeff level of kink, if you know what I mean," he hurries to add. "But still kink. There should be kink." When Chuck unveils the mystery of his lover's sexual interests, there's an unexpected problem: He doesn't share them. He doesn't get them. And he doesn't want them. At all.
Beta: millari who let me profit from her expertise in all the things I don't write a lot, such as the fluff, the sex, and the relationship issues.
Author's Note: This story involves a medical sex / doctor play kink. I had been contemplating whether I should point that out up front or not, but decided to do it for potential squickiness. However, I feel that warning for the unusual kinkiness might result in people skipping on the fic who might otherwise really enjoy it, because in a way, I wrote the fic for people who don't have the kink rather than for the ones who're sold on it in any case.
The first thing Chuck does is ask Sarah for advice during a fake date. It's probably not the smartest thing he's ever done, but at least there is food while he makes a fool of himself.
"It's not that our sex life isn't good the way it is, because it really, really is," he says, leaning forward, frowning, and pausing to carefully move the candelabra out of the way before focusing back on her. "It's an excellent sex life. Very, very satisfying. We have orgasms all the time. In bed, on the couch... definitely on the couch... in the shower..."
"That's nice," Sarah says. "More than I ever wanted to know, but nice."
"Right," Chuck says, smiling at the maitre d' in distraction when he passes by. "Sorry. So it's not that it's not working. It's just." He grimaces in desperation. "He never wants to try anything out. Me, I have lots of ideas. Lots and lots of ideas. Not on a Jeff level of kink, if you know what I mean," he hurries to add. "But still kink. There could be kink."
Sarah, expertly dissecting her steamed lobster, looks up with an expression like she'd rather not. "So you're saying that John doesn't like kink."
Chuck pauses. "Not exactly," he admits. "He's always happy to go along, it seems, which, you know, I appreciate. A lot." He feels his shoulders slump down. "He just never has any ideas of his own."
It's a wonderful evening. A string quartet is playing in a corner, and waiters are hurrying through the labyrinth of tables to fulfill your wishes before you can even think to make them. It's their fifth fake anniversary. People will be expecting pictures.
It was most likely a mistake to bring this up with his fake girlfriend, but his only other options are his sister and Morgan and just - no.
He gives Sarah a pained smile when she looks at him long and hard to let him know that she has never wanted to have this conversation, and also she can throw a knife faster than he can flash, just in case he forgot.
"Shouldn't he have kinks?" he asks, determined to get it over with. "Everybody has kinks, don't they? It doesn't have to be wild. Just... some tying up or toys or spanking. I'd let him spank me." He pauses. "I could spank him," he adds, considering that new thought and deciding that it isn't bad. "There have to be kinks," he repeats rather lamely.
Sarah is coughing when she puts down the glass.
Then she pushes away her plate, folds her hands on the table and sighs. "Chuck," she says, not unkindly now. "Have you considered that Casey, as a spy, might just have done and seen things that have given him a taste for the mundane?"
"I... what?" he asks, once his brain catches up.
Sarah gives her lobster a last longing glance. "I know I wouldn't want to be bound and gagged in bed," she says, making Chuck the one who blushes, because, whoa, the images there. She smirks. "It'd be too much like the work day. And you'd have to make a show of it, too, to produce knots we don't try to open by reflex." She shrugs. "Blindfolds, dominance games, strangely shaped objects... It's only so much fun if you've done it when it was for real." She gives him a hard look. "He's a spy," she says. "Things have happened to him. You don't get good at it it without developing some issues."
Chuck stares at her. "Are you saying my boyfriend is traumatized?" he says. There are many words he associates with John Casey, but "hurt" and any of its synonyms have yet to be added to the equation. John talks of the time he was tortured in Yemen frequently and liberally, usually to scare the rooks. As in, Morgan.
But Sarah doesn't give an inch. "We're spies," she says resolutely. "We have issues. And now, please, darling." She smiles sweetly and puts her hand on his just when the waiter arrives at their table. "Let's order the sweetest dessert they have."
---
Chuck is pretty sure that John is not traumatized. He contemplates this, leaning against his partner's kitchen sink, watching the man himself sitting at the table, engrossed in cleaning his guns. Through the door behind John, he can just make out the Reagan portrait Chuck gave him for his birthday.
John is all muscle, careful long fingers and thinly veiled aggression, which Chuck has learned to read as the man's way of relaxing. That and the bonsai, at that. So he might be looking deeply traumatized, he really might, it's true.
Though the first time they had sex, John had told him with a growl, "Hands off my balls, Bartowski," and then with a sparkle in his eyes, "Ba'ath terrorist poked at them with a hot stick once, and I'm fond of them." And that just isn't what a guy tells you if he wakes up covered in sweat from his bad past. Which John doesn't do, either.
"You know," he says, because he has talked to John about this, or rather he's talked at John, excessively, and John has even played along for a while. He's a good lover. He just, well. Doesn't ever change his opinion. Except when he said Chuck would doom all of America and then he started sleeping with him, of course, so nothing's carved in stone. "You know," Chuck repeats. "Feathers. Tickling. Some couples go for it. There's nothing dark and suggestive about feathers, and..."
"Chuck," John says pleasantly without looking up. "Shut up."
Right. Because the more things change.
---
John makes up for it the following night by encouraging Chuck to lay back on the bed, and recounting a fantasy he had of fucking Chuck on a counter the last time he stayed in the surveillance car. John's low voice in his ear and his hand on his dick, Chuck reaches climax within minutes. It's great, as he told Sarah, it's satisfying - god, it's satisfying - but as he also told her, that isn't the problem. The problem is that it's about Chuck, and about pressing Chuck's buttons, which John has long since excelled at. If Chuck was a violin, John would be Niccolo Paganini, except not dead in Italy.
And it's not that Chuck doesn't know some buttons to push on his own. That is, he knows the ones he can find out without being told. He knows that playing with John's nipples does pretty much nothing for him, but there's a spot at the crook of his neck that can be used to drive him crazy. He knows stroking along the edge of John's loins with his thumb makes him grow almost hard, and he can do that blow job thing where he twists his tongue just so to make him grunt. He knows to stay alert in case John punches the sheet when coming - and that's a punch by a guy who can knock you right out -, and singing romantic 70's songs in his ear makes him inexplicably horny, probably because it makes him chuckle despite himself.
Chuck knows all that. But if he hadn't told John to do more of that dirty talk thing, John probably wouldn't have guessed - or maybe he would have, maybe he learned in seduction school, which would explain a lot. But he wouldn't have known of Chuck's long-lasting fantasy of having sex in his old high school gym - god, that was fun -, and he definitely wouldn't have known that quite a lot of Chuck's masturbation habits evolve around Casey in full dress. Chuck credits him highly for the fact that he didn't even complain about the stains on his Medal of Honor, even if he blanched at the sight.
And Chuck wants to know these things about John, too. He gets that John doesn't do I-statements. He gets that the emotions John is best at expressing are anger, focus and, on special occasions, quiet, manly angst. He gets all that, and it's okay, because Chuck talks enough for the two of them. And considering Sarah even refused to tell him her name until she couldn't, he can put it in perspective.
But he still wants to make John whimper beyond words the way John made him whimper in the gym, completely coming loose.
"Tell me something," Chuck says two days later with his arms around John in the shower, slick wet skin rubbing against his. "I need your expert opinion as a spy. If you really wanted to know something about a friend, but your friend won't tell and it isn't written down... and you don't want to threaten or drug him," he adds after a thoughtful pause, because this is still John. "What would you do?"
He feels John shrug, since the other man is distracted already, pressing him against the wall and searching his throat for a good place to kiss. "Breaking and entering isn't out?" he says. "Everything can be a clue. Search his place. You're a spy. Act the part." His smirk tickles Chuck's skin. "It's all a matter of a high enough cost-benefit ratio."
It's better advice than Sarah has offered, and since this conversation is still not going to happen with Ellie and Morgan, Chuck decides to take it.
---
The opportunity presents itself just two days later when Big Mike orders John to work late at the store. It's punishment for prolonged yoghurt sessions, and also the other penitent is Lester, who everybody knows works with double efficiency if John is there to glare at his back.
It isn't strictly breaking and entering since picking the lock is actually what John expects of Chuck if Chuck arrives while John is asleep.
There are cameras running in John's absence, of course, and though the foot sensors are attuned to him, Chuck still makes a point of looking around with confusion and muttering, "Now where did I put the damn thing?"
He knows John would consider gay material to be potentially compromising, but Chuck also knows all the good hiding spots at this juncture. He sweeps the living room shortly, but leaves it be in favor of the bedroom, a much more likely target. The safe behind Ronald Reagan only contains the emergency stash, anyway.
He finds nothing in the back of the drawer, in the small safe under the desk, and in the secret drawer of the nightstand - although he guessed up front that this close to the bed would be too obvious a spot.
It's the bathroom cabinet that reveals a second sheathing. When Chuck turns the water tap to the left and hums the opening of the national anthem, it opens up, revealing a small assortment of books and DVDs on a shelf.
The first one is season one of The Hulk, which shouldn't amuse him as much as it does.
Again, amusingly, two of the books are romantic novels, albeit gay ones. "John, John... you're so full of surprises," he mutters, suppressing a chuckle when putting them away. He can just imagine how John would claim they were a gift, or possibly point out their artistic values, revealing a ridiculously broad knowledge of literature, because with him, you never know.
The other books turn out to be photobooks, aesthetically staged black-and-white art of young dark-haired men with lithe frames and slender shoulders. They make Chuck pause, prompting a strangely flattered smile because even he can recognize the type, and John really thinks Chuck can measure up to that? But while he might have to borrow those books the official way to look at them in depth, they're also all-around kink-free.
Chuck is starting to lose hope when reaching for the stash of DVDs.
"What the hell?" he mutters, looking through them with wide eyes. Most of them are all the same, straightforward gay porn - anal, oral, the usual shebang. So John likes younger men. Chuck knew that before, and also, what man a certain age doesn't? And apparently, he really has a thing for the sex merchandise made in Germany. But there are two or three that are about something entirely different, definitely a kink just like expected, but unfortunately it's one foreign to Chuck.
He picks one randomly and blankly scans the cover of Intime Inspektionen No. 03, on which a guy is tied to a GYN chair - an identification gracefully provided by a flash, because Chuck would surely not recognize such chairs without the Intersect. There's something up his ass that Chuck, with growing horror, thinks has to have to do with an enema.
Oh stars and gartlers. John's into medical sex.
---
So, curiosity killed the cat.
Or so Chuck can't help thinking for the next two hours or so. After that, he cools off fast, realizing that the proverb doesn't match the situation after all, because he didn't learn more than he wanted to know. No, given the opportunity to travel back in time, he doesn't see how he would stop himself from looking up John's kinks. Because it's still John. And it's still his kinks. And Chuck still wants to know.
He's put the kinky pornos back on the hidden shelf and left the apartment muttering about how he "must have left it at Sarah's." Thus assured of his cover, he engages in some hacking to make sure the NSA and CIA won't trace his internet connection - he's taken to downloading his porn by borrowing his neighbor's connection on general principle, anyway. Then he commits an evening to studying the strange and obscure world that apparently is his lover's secret preference.
He convinces himself that it's not so much because John is NSA, it's rather just because he's from a different generation. Each generation their kinks, he's heard that somewhere. Things that look ominous to him might suddenly be perfectly common if you were born in 1965 in Utah.
He's always thought that 1965 in Utah explains one hell of a lot about John Casey, anyway.
---
It's a boring night of surveillance, the sushi long eaten and the coca cola cans dried up. John and Morgan are inside the building, posing as a cleaning staff extra and a pool billiard pro. Sarah and Chuck are in the van, it being yet another practice run for Morgan, and she is focusing on the monitors, listening to new intel coming in, while Chuck is watching her thoughtfully.
His fingers sneak to the controls, innocently disabling their side of the connection. "So I've been thinking about what you said about John and sex."
"And here I am wishing already that I'd never done so."
Chuck smirks, folding his arms in front of his chest. Sarah's eyes are still primed on the monitors. If there's one thing he's learned after five years of spy work, it's that you just have to talk over their heads. They don't in actuality mind, and it makes at least one of them horny.
"I think you're wrong," he said. "I think John has a kink, after all."
"Please stop right there."
"So now that I know the kink, the question is, what does he like about it? I get what you said before, I really do. Once somebody ties you up for real, you have no interest in repeating it for fun. So I guess now I know a situation of coercion he hasn't been in," he muses aloud, ignoring Sarah's shudder. "But how can I make it work for him if I don't get what part of it gets him off?"
Sarah gives him a look. "Have you considered asking Casey that question?"
"Are you kidding?" Chuck feels a little offended. "He doesn't even know I broke into his place to get the intel."
His fellow spy doesn't dignify that one with an answer, which is fair enough, but her eyes speak volumes. She takes great care to turn them back to the feeds.
"It's always all psychological, right?" he tries. "People want control in bed because their bosses have their asses in real life all the time." And doesn't that just say terrible things for absolutely every last one of his colleagues at the Buy More. "They like spanking because they've never learned to associate it with bad things..."
"They want sex in public places because they've got adrenaline deficiency," Sarah throws in dryly. "Maybe Casey needs to go on more missions."
Chuck rolls his eyes at her. "I'm just saying," he says. "If you have a really... really special kink, there's got to be a reason for it."
"Yes," Sarah agrees easily. "And as you're absolutely not about to tell me about John's, I won't be able to help you figure it out... Watch that." Growing alert, her eyes become trained on the image of Morgan mopping his way to the target's office door. "Contact Casey, I'm on Morgan."
As much as Chuck hates to admit it, Sarah does have a point. He just needs more intel.
---
"So, Devon," Chuck says, leaning at the kitchen counter - his sister's this time - and watching Awesome do his hundredth or so sit-up this fine day. "Imagine you have a patient. He has a terrible medical problem. You've got a list of all the symptoms, you can't figure out the cause. But you have to act. What do you do?"
Awesome somehow manages to crunch his face and think this over without pausing in rapidly counting his pushes, lips moving without sound. "Conservative treatment," he says, coming up, coming up again, counting. "Treat him for the symptoms, monitor the side-effects, draw conclusions from that."
"Okay, alright," Chuck amends. "Let's say you can't treat him with medication. Uhm, because there isn't enough time." And because it would break his metaphor. This one isn't about to resolve itself by waiting it out. "What do you do?"
Without pausing his motion, Devon gives him a worried look. "I don't know, bro," he says. "Sounds like you'll just have to go in and give it a poke."
It's amazing the advice you can get without ever bringing up the real issue.
---
The more he learns about the porn, the surer Chuck grows that he can handle this, mostly because he's working really hard on convincing himself of that fact. So it's weird and obscure and involving his sister's profession - dear god, don't ever think that again. It also does nothing for Little Chuck. But it's what John likes, and Chuck will be damned if he doesn't find a way to make it work.
Still, he's relieved when he can discard of the enemas. His research indicates that there are special pornos about that, and John owns none of those, so there, it can't be a requirement. There's also a whole genre of medical instruments being used as torture devices, and Chuck discards of those a little more reluctantly. He has no wish to cause John pain, but he can't say he would have minded terribly if he could tie him down and have his evil way with him. As much as it pains him, Sarah was probably right on that account.
It doesn't take long until he gains a pretty good idea of what works for John and what doesn't. The GYN chairs so do. Patient gowns don't. And there's always the prostate exams.
How the Germans come into this, however, Chuck can't for the life of it begin to figure out. Is it the glaring lack of gowns? Is it the harsh yet alluring accents of the Doktoren? The mystery remains, and there's another conversation that is so not going to take place... no matter Morgan would probably know.
Yet, he is feeling pleased with himself. He can do this. He can do it for John. It's not gonna be weird, because there isn't any need to do the extreme fetish porno things, and even if he only manages an approximation, it'll still be sex focusing on John. Chuck will finally be able to give him something back. He'll do what Devon told him to do - go in and give it a poke.
Apparently, quite literally.
That night, Chuck dreams of drips and spatulas, which does nothing for him, but he still wakes up coming to the image of John with his dick in hand, which definitely does.
Chuck doesn't need to know why it gets John off. He's been on dozens of missions without fully understanding what the hell they were about.
Like the Cylons, he has a plan.
---
The IKEA-like box is huge and heavy, straining Chuck's shoulders when they carry it onto John's patio. There's sweat on Morgan's forehead when they set it down, but he still crunches his face at Chuck again. "It's nothing illegal, is it? Like a bazooka. Or a rocket launcher. Oh god, you didn't have some sort of Ebay mafia boss send me a rocket launcher, did you?"
"It's not a rocket launcher," Chuck assures him, trying to catch his breath.
"Because I'm just saying, man," Morgan says. "It's not like I don't get why you like the big guy, except for, y'know, the glaring lack of womanly features. He's got a little something to him with all that muscle and the scary grunts, right? But, buddy, I'm just really not sure I want to know what kind of gift for him comes in a really heavy box."
"Well, I hate to say it, Morgan, but - don't ask, don't get the answer you'd hate?"
"Holy beard of Sauron, it is a rocket launcher."
"Yes." Chuck pulls himself up, smirking at Morgan. "I used your address to buy Casey a rocket launcher on Ebay, and the reason I didn't just requisition one through the CIA is because Sarah would have noticed and stolen it away out of greed."
"I knew it!"
Glancing at John's door, Chuck wonders how he'll get the box inside before his boyfriend comes home. And if the not-rocket launcher came with an instruction manual. He's pretty sure the Intersect won't help.
---
The big moment comes two hours and several medical engineering flashes later. The GYN chair has been erected in the middle of the room, looking intimidating in a sterile way, stirrups folded at the sides. Dressed in a lab coat and nervously clutching the stethoscope around his neck, Chuck can hear John entering the house. He takes a deep breath before turning towards the bedroom door, plastering his best anonymous smile on his face. It's just like a mission, he reminds himself, albeit an unusual and probably somewhat unconstitutional one.
"Mr. Casey!" His smile grows a little wider in a mad sort of way. "Guten Tag, Herr Casey. And there I thought you wouldn't make it in time for your appointment. If you would just take a seat, I'll be with you in a minute."
The plan was to turn around and meaningfully jingle the medical tools he has liberated from Castle's prop archive, but Chuck finds himself frozen in place. It looked all good in theory, but what if he's been wrong, and John just likes watching the weird kinky porn but not doing? Or what if he wants Chuck to be the one on the table?
Because John's face has frozen. Buy More bag still slung over his shoulder, he's looking from Chuck to... yes, the chair like he thinks the Intersect has fried Chuck's brain.
Chuck clears his voice. "Uhm," he says. "It says here ..." Noticing he isn't, in actuality, holding a clipboard, his hand snakes out to snatch one. "Aha! It says here that you've been somewhat remiss in attending your check-ups. Na so was. Oh my." He threatens to run out of air. "We'll have to be thorough to make up for the time, the time lost."
When he glances back up, John's face is not only still blank, but he's also standing a lot closer.
"Uhm," Chuck says.
"What cockamamie scheme have you come up with this time, Chuck." It's said in a low cautious voice into his ear, and John is looking right past him. A spy's cautious stance.
"Ahem. That's Carmichael, actually. Dr. Carmichael." Because no way is he using Ellie's title for this one. Do not think of Ellie. Remember we're in Germany. No Ellie in Germany. He gives John a meaningful look. "I can see from your record that you are not a friend of the annual medical examination, Colonel..." He doesn't know where that one came from, but John tenses up next to him, and not in a bad way. Not in a bad way at all. "...but it's very important for people such as yourself who keep their needs on a secret DVD shelf in the bathroom."
John's eyes flicker at him when the implications dawn. Chuck crooks his head and shoots him a question. Is this alright? Because we could just... not.
When John lowers his eyes in a motion totally uncharacteristic even when directed at superior officers, Chuck is still so surprised that he flinches. "Yes, sir," John mutters. A tense beat. Then, the correction, "Jawohl, Sir." And, very quietly, "Where do you want me?"
Holy shit, it's working.
Breathe on. Breathe on... there was a question... "Chair! The chair. Sit down, please. The, uhm, normal way to start with. If you would take off your shirt so that I can check your vitals."
Awesome sex, he reminds himself. It doesn't feel like it - or like sex at all really - but there'll be awesome sex in the end. John has done the full dress. Chuck can do the chair.
At least he's getting to touch John's very well-toned upper body, which Chuck has always had a special fondness for because it was the first thing to clue him in on his expanded sexuality.
John seems to be getting over the shock that is his modified bedroom, moving to lean against the chair as if not quite ready to yield to the proposition just yet, but willing to go along for now. His eyes flicker to the stethoscope when Chuck brandishes it, and - oh, good - there's the first trace of amusement in his face when Chuck almost drops it.
"This is only going to take a minute," Chuck says in a softer voice, appreciating how John is allowing him to stand too close during that one, his stomach muscles twitching when the cold instrument touches the skin next to a gun shot scar. He looks just a little like a Greek god. "Now breathe in. Breathe out. And breathing in again... very good."
John is holding very still, vigilant eyes on Chuck. "Everything alright, doc?" he asks in a low voice, and Chuck wonders for the hundredth time what it is that John is getting off on here. But he must be, because he's never been shy about grabbing Chuck and doing unspeakable things to him by way of a corrective action.
Chuck sure hopes he didn't get his inclinations out of seduction school. They're gonna send Chuck there eventually, albeit not during the Cold War, which might account for the language thing that John is obviously willing to go for...
"I'll have to finish the exam before we'll know." He clears his voice, unable to take his fingers off John's chest for a second. Wow again. Very nice pecs. "It's too early to say."
"Jawohl, Sir," John says easily.
This is nice, Chuck thinks, grabbing a spatula and deflecting a flash on doing tonsil surgery when looking at John's throat. Not arousing arousing, but nice. He shines a light into John's eyes, and feels for the lymph nodes behind his ears. Through all of it, John stays uncharacteristically compliant, enduring the poking and prodding with the same stoicism that he must apply at real annuals. After all, even a highly decorated officer such as John can't just knock out a doctor when impatient, only the bad guys would do that. So he allows for Chuck to stand closely, free hand resting on John's shoulder and caressing his neck, his breath hitching when Chuck 'accidentally' grazes that spot just above his belt line.
Chuck can't help but wonder if there's a note in John's medical file about staying the fuck away from his balls. There better be.
He clears his voice. "Are you taking any medication right now?"
"No, sir." It's a brash one.
"Any lasting pain from old injuries?"
"No, sir."
"Any other kind of discomfort that you need to report? Now's the time. Wouldn't want to waste any of those tax dollars by having it become a problem later in the field, nicht wahr?"
"Yessir." John pauses, calculating look on his face. And Chuck gets that at least, suddenly: It might seem squicky to go there with the military exams and the ranks, but that's just how it works in John's world. He saw his last civilian doctor when he was a teen. And John is leaning back against the chair more comfortably, granting Chuck an eyeful of all those muscles ready to be touched. Going by the glint in his eyes, he's getting really horny. "Maybe I've been having some abdominal pain. Nothing special. Somewhere along the lines of here."
His hand grazes what the Intersect insists is the lower abdominal region, while the rest of Chuck insists it's underneath his belt, and close to his cock. The message, anyway, is clear. This cue Chuck recognizes from the porn. Oh my. He really wants to go there.
"Aha. See, Colonel Casey, things like that need to be reported because they could get serious abruptly. Remember that all this is for your own health, and say so immediately the next time, verstanden? Understood? Open your belt." Trying to control his nerves, Chuck slips his hands into John's pants to apply pressure. John audibly takes a breath, chest heaving once. "Does this hurt? What about this?"
John nods, breath still ever so irregular. It's one of the most alluring sounds in Chuck's universe, making his own Johannes stir just a bit.
"How often do you masturbate, Colonel?"
"Depends on how much my boyfriend blabs at me."
Smartass. "Say on average."
"Three times a week or so."
Interesting. There's no other situation in which John would have offered up that one. Something tells Chuck it's true, too.
Maybe that's the deal, he thinks. Spies are supposed to lie, except to their doctors.
Though certainly they'd lie to German doctors, right?
Chuck's thumbs graze pubic hair. He might be discovering some of the perks here.
From the way the front of John's pants are straining, he's been hard as a rock ever since the spatula.
"Does the pain lessen after you've ejaculated?"
"Yeah." And there's a smirk dancing there in John's eyes. "That helps a lot, sir."
No matter what John still claims he thinks of Chuck's performance on missions, Chuck gives him a look to show he's not in actuality stupid. He retracts his hands abruptly. You're not gonna get that this fast, buddy. We've got a script here, and I intend on following it. "I'll have to examine you internally. It might be a problem with your prostate. These things can get very serious, fatal even, if they aren't properly taken care of by experts such as myself."
It takes focus to shut up the Intersect, which is offering to brush up on his proctology in a pained way.
Smirking, Chuck steps aside and yanks the stirrups into place. They clank ominously. John's eyes jerk there. "If you'd please undress fully."
"You really gonna use that thing?"
It's impossible to tell if it's a honest question or just role play. Chuck wavers, suddenly unsure. John has done this before, right? Many times? Right? "Well," he says in a high voice. "This is a medical examination after all and not a... a Halloween scare, Colonel... But if you'd rather not...?"
John clears his voice. "Not exactly my choice, sir."
It's so rare to see an actual unconfident expression on John's face that it makes Chuck want to reach out and touch his formidable jaw. His eyes flicker down to John's hands moving to drop his pants, and he swallows.
It's about honesty, he thinks, at least in parts. It doesn't explain the chair yet or the other ... instruments, but it's about not being supposed to lie. It's not fake.
From the way John releases a small breath, it's a relief to have his cock spring free from the constraining pants. And what a fine speciman that is.
Chuck clears his voice. His own pants are feeling rather tight from the sight. "I know it's a complicated procedure," he improvises, although it's really not according to the Intersect. "And uncomfortable physically, but it is very, very necessary if you want me to clear you for duty." For duty behind the Berlin Wall, apparently. "If you would take a seat on the chair now." His eyes roam John, all lithe and lean, sitting down on the lower end of the chair. "Now slide back and lie down... yes, like that... and put your legs up there."
Oh god. This, he thinks, his suddenly really hot. Not so much anymore in a minute when he'll get back to the more medical part, he knows, but John - his John - lithe, muscular, deadly John yielding to what looks like the most uncomfortable and violable position ever. The bad guys can't positively ever have forced him into that one during torture. John's almost too tall for the chair, abs tensing when he places his legs on the stirrups, spread wide, ass and genitals exposed.
"If you'd just wait another moment," the script Chuck has been clinging to requires him to say - in German - so he can turn and tease John by having him wait. But this sight and the incredible trust it implies forbid the notion of letting John hang in there alone. Chuck's foot moves to push his stool closer and he reaches out to pull the tray over. Stepping up between John's legs, he places his hands on John's thighs. Automatically John jerks away - an almost imperceptible defensive measure.
"Relax, Colonel," Chuck hears himself say, hands moving in soothing circles. "This is a perfectly common procedure. I have done it many times." This is not strictly true - there have been no men before John in Chuck's life, and John isn't in a mood to bottom all that much. There's one way of the Intersect coming in handy in the private life, though, and Chuck will never question why that kind of stuff is in there. "It might hurt a little later on..." Like hell it will, but the line's on the list. "But there's a protocol we have to follow here."
His hands move lower, carefully passing by John's balls to massage his ass cheeks with his thumbs, and he can feel John relaxing. The spy has closed his eyes, tense face betraying that he's all there and perfectly vigilant, taking deep breaths. His cock twitches when Chuck's thumb edges close to his sphincter.
"Yessir," he breathes belatedly, then, "Jawohl, Sir," and Chuck takes that as his cue to draw his stool underneath himself and sit down on it, reaching for the lube on the tray. He has a nice one for that, and to hell that it's a pretty big real syringe and that that should make it icky, it's hot as hell to hold open John's ass carefully and insert it to inject the lubricant inside of him. A whole body shudder runs through John, trembling all under Chuck's fingers.
Yeah, this is nice.
"I'm going to use a finger now to examine your prostate. If you would just open your legs a little wider... lift up a little? That's it. This is going to take... a couple of minutes, but I am going to have to do a full examination."
It's Chuck's turn to shudder now, because John's breath is catching, and, as Chuck's finger pushes inside of him, transforming into a small moan. He waits a moment to allow John to adjust before carefully starting to move it, wiggling it a little under the pretense of feeling for something. When he finds the prostate, rubbing the spot with the tip of his finger, each of John's breaths is accompanied by a low involuntary sound. And hell, that's hot, because Chuck has often thought that they must have taught John to keep his mouth shut during sex so as not to compromise his cover. It's a pity that he can't properly see his face from this angle.
"You may be feeling a little pressure," he sing-songs, happy with the world and the flush on his face, and the exciting sounds John is making getting louder. His legs are twitching in the stirrups.
"'m gonna come if you keep that up..."
"I beg your pardon?" That one is not on the list, but John's hips almost come off the chair.
"Nothing, sir."
Chuck grins. It's the grin of the truly and honestly sexually happy. "Now I would advise you to hold stiller if you want me to finish the job, Colonel, and to try and loosen up some more so that I can reach everything properly. I would hate to have to use a Spekulum."
John grunts - in a good way. Chuck, meanwhile, is vastly realizing that he's lying, because he wouldn't hate the speculum at all. At this rate, he's thinking he could deal with just about any device - maybe even with that weird thing he doesn't quite get that's called sounding.
Making sure not to overdo it with the prostate in case John really means it, he stops brushing against that spot quite that insistently, but reaches out to fist John's cock - "This should help you open up" - and adds another finger.
And god, John looks stunning like this, sprawled out and wide open and allowing Chuck to do these things to him even if he has to put himself into the impersonal mind frame to do so.
Maybe it's because the hospitals and doctors are what he goes back to after missions, Chuck thinks, surprised that he still can think, because now he's just focusing on getting John ready while his other hand fiddles with his own belt, reaching for his own cock - god. This is where he can let the adrenaline run out and trust that somebody else is gonna take care of whatever gun wounds and dislocated joints he brought home. It makes sense - spy version of a safe space.
He can't believe that John is letting him---
"Keep talking," John grinds out in a strained voice.
That's nothing he has to request twice. Chuck is too far gone to come up with doctoral snark, so he just starts babbling. His face has to look like during a flash when he readjust the grip on his cock. "Well, I'm, I'm afraid that this is rather serious. I'll have to ... give it ... a much closer look... and also, possibly, probably get a sample of your... ejaculate next... holy shit." He's stood up, pushing down his pants, and catching a better look at John. John is breathing hard, even when Chuck extracts his fingers, glancing at Chuck with an expression Chuck mostly knows from when he's drunk. Chuck places a hand on John's loins, unable to break contact.
John's ass is so slick that Chuck just slides home, rolling his eyes upwards to thank whatever god might be watching. "Son of a motherless..." Whatever colorful insult John came up with this time, Chuck will never know, because his voice transforms into a hiss. Chuck does personally also have trouble mastering the coherence, but John asked him - John asked him - so his mouth just keeps moving, no matter he's lost the capability to check if the words make any sense.
An overwhelmed tiny sound escaped him, because John's ass feels ridiculously tight and hot around his cock, and that will just never get old.
"Uhm, weiter so... Meine Güte... You've... almost... made it, Colonel, just a moment longer..." Probably not a long one, his brain supplies faintly... "Just remember that I'm doing this for your own good... and my good, too, quite frankly, because this is... oh god, John... Colonel, this is great." Breathing out the last one, he can feel John straining to open his legs wider despite the stirrups. The chair is clanking ominously under his thrusts, not meant to hold up against any 'examination' quite like this one. Chuck's hand is wrapping around John's leaking cock again, and he starts fisting it vigorously with his lubed hand. His other hand is on John's thigh, unable to let go. He faintly thinks he's started repeating himself - he's run out of lines - but he does not care. "I'm probably going to have to... run some more tests... when we're done here... and ask you to come back for another appointment next week... in which... I'm afraid... we're just not going to get around that speculum and some of the other... really scary instruments that I've stolen for you..."
The chair is screeching, rocking back and forth, and John - face distorted - has wrapped his hand around one of the struts so hard that his biceps are showing.
He makes a desperate sound between a moan and a grunt, and he starts coming, head thrown back, hot splatters wetting Chuck's hand and hitting John's stomach. Chuck can't but hyper focus on the sight, feeling John contract around his cock hard, seeing his face contort more. The world narrows down to that glorious feeling that has absolutely nothing to do with drips and spatulas - though, god, right now he'd recite the 2010 baseball stats if this was the result for John. It takes another couple of thrusts and he feels himself starting to come, pressing tight against John in a desperate attempt to get even deeper inside.
Breathing hard, he catches himself upon John's shoulders, hanging his head and desperately trying to come to his senses. He feels a laugh bubbling up, the kind that happens when you belatedly notice that there used to be anxiety, which has vanished. Instead, he grows aware that John has gone still underneath him, harsh heaving of his chest the only sound there is, and he clears his voice, trying to clear his head in the process as well, looking at his lover's face.
John's cheeks are flushed, sweat on his forehead, and he looks a little like he does on missions when he can't believe Chuck just pulled a ridiculously geeky stunt that miraculously hasn't left them dead.
"Uhm," Chuck manages. "Was it good for you? Because it, it was pretty good for me. Not saying that we can't improve on it the next time we do it, especially if you'll actually tell me what exactly you like about it, and which of those tools to use, but, you know, really pretty amazingly good for a first time doing anything to do with..."
"Shut up, Chuck," John says. A jerk runs through the chair when he puts one of his legs out of the stirrup, using one steely calf to pull Chuck in. He topples onto John with an "Oomph." "I'm not complaining."
Chuck smiles against John's chest serenely. It has worked, he thinks delightedly. He has circumvented the Spy Conditioning of Inconvenience, and learned something new about his lover. He's made John come loose and whimper helplessly, and John has let him, because that's what John does when Chuck proposes something new - he goes along. Because he trusts that Chuck knows what he wants, and now he's also trusted Chuck to handle what John wants. Life is great.
"So, Genosse," John says, idly stroking Chuck's neck. "What's the German all about? Needed a little Cold War flavor to get it up? I wouldn't have pecked you the type."
Chuck raises his head to give him a confused look. "Wait, your whole collection is in German. Don't tell me you aren't into the German. I thought, I thought maybe you're into the accent, I mean, it is kind of alluring in a choppy sort of way if you get over the Schindler's List associations..."
John's lips start twitching. Then he drops his head back on the stretcher, chest rumbling from soundless laughter. "They don't ID you in the German sex shops," he says. "Great place if you want to stay under the radar with the gay porn. I bought the stuff when I was stranded there for a month. Lost my tail, mailed it to a P.O.B. back home, retrieved it a year later on leave."
"Oh... well." Chuck pauses. "That's somewhat anti-climatic."
"Forget about it. No harm done, right?"
With those words, John's hand tightens around his neck to pull him into a proper kissing position. Lips on Chuck's allowing for no nonsense, Chuck yields when John takes charge in a way that's a lot more familiar and common in their relationship than the spatula sex.
Chuck makes a small sound, thinking he'd be okay capping just about anything off like that. Because there's everything that needs saying in that kiss: Thank you and I appreciate the effort and I can't wait to do it again on that really cool chair you got me when it wasn't even my birthday.
It says, I love you loud and clear, reminding Chuck that I-statements are overrated, anyway.
"Bring a thermometer next time," John says just a minute later.
Chuck smiles.