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basched! This one is for you, my amazing mate! I got thinking back to when we first 'met' and this ficlet kinda happened. I had the vague idea in my head for a very long time and finally decided how to make it work just in time for your Birthday! I'm sure you'll make sense of this, even if nobody else does ;) Hope you have a fabulous Birthday filled with fun and awesomeness!!! :DTo everyone reading this who isn't
basched - explanation is in the second A/N at the end of the fic ;)Title: Casey vs the Old Flame
Author: Ultra
Summary: Casey never expected to see her again, especially not in Paris, especially not now...
Timeline: AU futurefic - it'll make sense when you read it!
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: All recognisable characters from Chuck belong to other folks that aren’t me.
Most people from the US wouldn’t expect to see anyone they knew in a bar in Paris, and that included John Casey. Of course, he was at least aware of the fact that he might know someone, that he might have been followed or was under surveillance. It came with the job of being a spy so many years, and no matter how relaxed he was supposed to be on this romantic getaway, he couldn’t quite manage it. It was not in his nature to let his guard down, at least not in public, and he was on high alert even as he pulled out the chair for his companion and then took his own seat.
A man in a smart suit appeared on the stage in front of Casey and mostly behind his date who craned her neck a little to see.
“Presenter el talents musical de... Mademoiselle Lola Durand,” the man introduced with a flourish, as a beautiful woman in a long dress stepped out to take the microphone and sing.
“Wow, she’s really good,” Casey heard the woman across the table say though he only nodded absently in response.
She didn’t recognise the singer, not like he did, and he wasn’t exactly surprised. It had been quite a few years, and they really hadn’t been as close as they could’ve been. Casey had been close, too close to this woman, and was sure that from the day she went out of his life he would never see her again. Now here she was, larger than life and twice as beautiful, a torch singer in a Paris bar of all jobs and places. It was just about the one revelation that could shock the unshockable John Casey, that was for sure.
For the enstire length of the song he was transfixed by her. Though she was only partially lit by the spotlight, and it was perhaps all of five or six years since he saw her last, he was certain it was her. She sang well, he didn’t know that about her before, but then he hadn’t known much at all except that he was ridiculously attracted to her, just a little in love from the first time they met. She had made him feel like a stupid teenager for the brief time they had together, and broken a little piece of his cold heart away when she supposedly died in his arms.
The moment it appeared the song was coming to an end, Casey excused himself to go to the bathroom, though that was not his plan. He made a sharp turn before the hallway that led to the facilities, ducking behind the curtain that would take him beyond the stage.
High heels on the steps gave her away and he made a grab at her wrist the moment she was within reach. She reacted as he expected, slamming him against the wall with a knife to his throat. Casey only smiled.
“Haven’t lost your charms, Clarke,” he told her and even if she couldn’t see his face very well in the dim light, she would’ve known that voice anywhere.
“You shoulda learned by now not to sneak up on an armed woman, Colonel Casey,” she smirked right back as she let up her grip on him and put the knife away again in the sheath at her thigh, carefully concealed under her long shimmering dress. “Actually, I guess I should call you Brigadier General these days, huh?” she added smartly.
Casey didn’t flinch. Of all people, Marie would know about his promotion. Maybe she kept tabs on purpose, maybe she just heard things through the grapevine. He had deliberately steered clear of trying to keep up with her career, for both their sakes. That didn’t mean he wasn’t glad enough to see her now.
“And I’m supposed to call you, what? Lola?” he asked with a look of amusement.
The dress suited her, but the name didn’t. She wasn’t the showgirl type, the air-headed woman who could do no better than singing her heart out in a place like this. She was amazing, she was smart and strong, she could kick-ass as well as any woman he ever met, and there was something else that Casey never could figure out that made her special in his eyes, though he never used such words, it just wasn’t his style.
“Yeah, Mark came up with the cliché name,” she sighed, looking suddenly uncomfortable. “Funny story, ‘bout me and the boss man,” she admitted with a look as she reached inside her dress for the rest of the gold chain that hung around her neck.
There was an engagement ring attached to it, hanging inside her dress where once Casey recalled a heart shaped pendant of his own choosing had been, so very long ago. Now things were so different; Marie was engaged.
“Never struck me as the settling down kind,” he told her plainly.
“Well, who said anything about settling down,” she smiled in such a way that it made him do the same. “He’s one of us, he knows how it works. I’m not the stay at home wife and mother type exactly but Mark... he gets me,” she shrugged, a kind of misty look in her eyes as she went on. “Besides, he’s one of only two men in the world I ever met that could handle the wonder of me,” she told him with a look that spoke volumes. “Apparently a certain Miss Bartowski got the other one”.
Casey opened his mouth to speak and for a few seconds no sound came out. He ought to have known she knew more than just his career status if she had been keeping tabs. Somehow he almost wanted to apologise to her, and yet knew it was dumb. She had a fiancé, he had a wife. They had both moved on so much from the days of making out in the BuyMore storeroom, trying to front out what they might’ve been feeling, pretend it was something and nothing when in fact in had been everything, if only for a little while.
“Are you happy, John?” asked Marie then, eyes sparkling in the half-light, just as they had before.
He grunted at first, a sound that made her laugh in spite of the moment. All growls and grunts, that was how he communicated, she recalled. A man of few words and all the best actions. Yes, she remembered it all so well, though their time together had been brief, of course. She couldn’t ever forget him, just as she promised, and would never want to.
“Happy as people like us can be,” he told her eventually, the phrase non-committal at best. “You?” he checked. “Because if anyone is stopping you from being happy, I can deal with that,” he said, just this side of serious.
“I think I got it covered,” she reminded him of her own skills in that department without a care, before a noise in her ear made she looked back over her shoulder. “Sounds like I gotta run,” she admitted, looking sorry for it somehow when her eyes returned to his. “You know how it is, Johnny”.
“I do,” he nodded once, “but... it was good seein’ you, Marie,” he used the name he always knew her by.
She could be Lola, Jane, Susan or Rachel, any name under the sun, and still he would call her that same name in his head, and aloud when he saw her. Not that he expected to see her again, not this time.
“Hey,” he called when she turned away.
There was an urge in him to just kiss her already, just one last time before she was gone forever, but he couldn’t do it. Things were so different now, for the both of them. She saw the look in his eyes when she glanced back and she returned it, just a little regret and pain underneath all the good that had come out of their lives. They were a man and woman of honour after all, anything they did here together, even a simple kiss, it would be betrayal somehow. Neither of them had it in them to do that.
“Watch your back,” he told her eventually, sounding like a commanding officer over anything else, and that was more out of habit than design.
“Yes, sir,” she smiled as she saluted like a good soldier and backed away, shifting the movement of her hand into a stupidly girlish wave before she finally turned and was gone.
She darted off down a corridor, running ridiculously well in stiletto heels and an evening dress. She was a professional, that was all there was to it.
Casey let out a breath he hardly knew he’d been holding. He didn’t need much time to pull himself together and by the time he got back to the table and his smiling wife, he was sure he must look normal enough. He doubted himself in a moment when concern showed in Ellie’s eyes.
“Are you feeling okay, John?” she checked, putting her hand over his on the table. “You look pale”.
“I’m fine, sweetheart,” he promised her, turning over his hand to pick up hers and raise her knuckles to his lips. “I’m sitting here with my beautiful wife in a beautiful place, celebrating the anniversary of our marriage. Nowhere else I’d rather be, and no-one else I’d rather be with,” he promised her, sincerely and honestly.
Ellie never doubted him, she had no reason to, and only blushed a pretty pink at his compliments that were sparsely given and therefore all the more worth the earning. His love for her was never in question on either side, and never would be. She was his present and his future, her and their beloved children. The past was gone, a shadow in his memory, never to be anything more again, since the final flame just went out.
The End
A/N2: For those who may have read this and got completely lost, this is a sequely thing to a couple of previous fics of mine - Chuck vs the Trouble Shooter and Chuck vs the Return Visit - which feature a Casey/Marie relationship; she was my OC that I invented a long while ago. Me and basched 'met' and bonded over these stories, amongst others, hence my writing her a mini sequel / ending fic for her Birthday ;)
