fic; Chuck: just like the present, to be showing up like this.
title: just like the present, to be showing up like this.
fandom: Chuck.
pairing: Chuck/Sarah.
rating: R.
words: 7378.
spoilers: Through 0301, where it goes AU. So, spoilers through that.
disclaimer: Fiction. I don't own anything here.
notes: I can't even explain what happened with this. I got so into Chuck, like, so damn fast and then I went crazy, mainlining what I could, where I could, and then I was like, "I think I'm going to write a fic!" And this happened. So. It's an AU from about the middle of Season 3's premiere. I DON'T KNOW WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME.
They go on the run.
(Again.)
The start of the train ride he's so jittery, leg bouncing up and down and up and down with adrenaline. She puts her hand on his thigh to stop him, it's distracting, other passengers are looking, and, really, drawing attention to themselves 20 minutes into being, like, fugitives is not a good start.
But she leaves her hand there and in deference to that little concession he spends the next hour, leg still, thinking of every movie he can where people are on the lamb.
He's stuck on Thelma and Louise for 20 minutes, when he finally hits on Bonnie and Clyde. It's cool and he's pleased, but then he remembers how that whole thing ended.
(Bloody gunfire death aside -- don't think about it, don't think about it -- he remains slightly and superficially pleased that somehow he's ended up with a woman actually hotter than young Faye Dunaway, even if he's no Warren Beatty.)
It's not until Sarah's sleeping, sitting straight up, face forward, like she's actually awake just in the middle of some long blink, that what they're doing, slams, kicks in his chest. They're not going to Barstow, they're not looking for anybody, they're just running. Toward nothing (toward freedom). Forever. He maybe groans out load. Her eyes shoot open and even though her head hasn't moved at all, it's like she's hovering with just her gaze or something.
When he puts a hand to cover hers on his leg, he squeezes so tight that her fingertips turn dark red before she finally says, "Chuck?"
"Hector," he corrects.
"Hector. What's going on, Hector."
It's not even a question, not even something he has a choice in answering.
"This is -- Sarah. This is serious."
It's pathetic and obvious and he sounds wimpy, but it's not actually about the threat to him or anything like that, it's about her, what she gave up, what he's doing to her (it always is).
"I know."
It's just another cold, hard fact, a statement, but he can see in her face that she's not wavering at all, not even a little bit, which is nice, because he's about six seconds away from puking. The motion of the train isn't helping.
Chuck's not sure what he's supposed to say to that, to Sarah giving up everything and committing just to him. She's got nothing else now. Just him. He's only got her, too, but that's like, oh, I've only oxygen. It's the opposite of what feels like years ago, standing in his tuxedo, hearing about her leaving in the morning, for the Intersect, with Bryce.
(He uses every single thing in him, every ounce of -- whatever, to not think about Ellie and Awesome and Morgan. Or Bryce, for that matter -- or his dad -- or. Oh god.)
He feels her fingers wiggling under him and he realizes he's still crushing her hand. It's embarrassing, to be this shaken up, he's got to be it for her. But this is -- some shit.
She turns her palm up and laces her fingers through his and although it's probably still tighter than it should be, his grip isn't cutting off circulation now, at least.
They stay like that through the first stop, white knuckled as passengers walk by them, boarding, de-boarding. When a man drops his bag just behind them and bends to pick it up, they both tense, watch for the glint of a gun or a threat. He picks it up and shuffles on, but the muscles in the back of his neck don't unknot and he figures they never will.
(There's a brief thought, a tiny little fantasy, where Sarah rubs the knots out for him. When he realizes that could happen, it could actually, really happen and not just for a cover, his pulse jumps.)
&&.
They've been on the train for hours and hours, he's not even sure where they're going, but they haven't made a stop in a while and he's maybe getting a little restless. They've only left their seats once, to use the bathroom, him watching the door for Sarah and then her watching it for him.
When he comes out, drying his hands on his pants, a bald, way-too-tan guy in an expensive suit is trying to chat her up in a language Chuck doesn't understand, but the Intersect does. She's indulging him (no need to draw attention by being rude), but Chuck can see the muscles working in her jaw. He puts his hand on the small of her back, nodding at the guy, and they walk away.
(He gives himself only two seconds for a shit-eating grin as they walk down the aisle, but she catches him anyway. She smiles, too -- smaller, not as cocky, but it's there and he made it happen.)
It's nothing but scenery out the window, miles and miles of middle of nowhere landscape, and he's finally starting to fall asleep, Sarah paging through an old newspaper next to him, when a woman at the front of their car screams. It's more like a yell, or a yelp, a throaty thing that sounds like it's coming right from her guts, but he and Sarah are on their feet anyway.
She's in labor.
Of course.
There's all sorts of screaming, people asking for a doctor, and Chuck can see on Sarah's face that she's trying to figure out if she can do it, if she can deliver the baby.
He flashes. She notices.
"Sarah --"
"Chuck," she's whispering, "Just wait. If no one else comes forward, you can do it. But being the hero -- again -- isn't exactly low profile."
They wait. The woman is yelling, contractions coming closer and closer together. Passengers have scattered into other cars looking for somebody, anybody, to help, but, despite two dentists and a chiropractor, no one's coming forward that would have done this before.
Sarah nods at him and he starts making his way down the aisle as fast he can. They've moved the woman into the row of seats at the front, the ones he tried to sit in when they first got on board because of the legroom, but Sarah had told him no.
He finally gets up there, trying to figure out what he can say (I'm not a doctor, but I can deliver this baby because of a government computer in my brain?) and the lady is just letting out a steady stream of swear words and groans.
He opens his mouth to speak (he's just going to say he's a doctor), when an older woman that barely comes up to his chest is there. Something about she retired years ago, but they'll get this baby out safely, all in a language he still can't believe he knows.
Sarah's eyes meet Chuck's and he slinks back to their seats. Sarah hands him his coat and he passes it up to the front. A nice, expensive, warm hospital gown the only thing he's going to contribute.
(The woman names the baby Victor after the doctor's husband. Which is fine because the kid didn't look like a Chuck, but still.)
By the time they finally get off the train in some city he's never heard of, Chuck's not exactly regretting the decision to go with Sarah, but he's definitely got something going on. What's regret when you don't want to change what you chose, but still feel bad about it? Depressed?
Sarah watches him the whole cab ride into town, it's like she knows, but doesn't want to bring it up. Like maybe it'll just go away. When they've checked into their hotel room, tossing what little luggage they did bring onto a rickety table, he can't keep it in anymore.
She's checking the room out, the locks on the window, the deadbolt, the vent in the bathroom, when he sits down on the bed and just blurts it out.
"I could've helped, Sarah."
She pauses, crouched next to an electrical outlet, and looks at him. "And if no one else could, you would have, but we have to be careful. Any attention is bad attention right now."
"I don't mean the woman, I mean everyone. This thing, the new Intersect, I could've learned to be a real spy, I could've learned how to use it, and I could've helped people."
Sarah stands up and walks in front of him, hands on his shoulders, waiting until he looks up at her.
"Do you want to go back?" There's no edge to her voice, barely any emotion in it at all, but he still nearly flinches.
It's not like there's a clear answer to any of this. "Do you want to go back?" could be "Do you want to help people and save the world?" and then the answer would be yes.
But it could also be: "Do you want to give up Sarah? Do you want to give up any shot at ever waking up next to her, a dog asleep on the edge of the bed and a daughter with curly blonde hair and Star Wars pajamas in the next room? Do you want to give up everything else?"
The fact that he knows exactly where those Star Wars pajamas are in the Target back home is a pretty clear sign that, no, he doesn't want to give it up.
When she moves her hands from his shoulders to his face, he realizes he hasn't said anything. But he still doesn't have anything to say, so he just wraps his arms around her and buries his face in her stomach.
She lets him stay like that for a long time. Long enough that he gets his breathing in sync with hers and long enough that he decides, at least right now, they can't go back. Sarah wants to help people, too, and they'll find a way, but they're no good to anybody dead or locked in a bunker.
If changing or saving the world is his purpose, then they're going to figure it out and do it together. He's not going to (can't) do it alone and going back now would mean he'd have to try.
He finally says, muffled and quiet into her shirt, "No."
Sarah pulls back and gives him a kiss on his forehead, like a blessing.
&&.
The first week they change hotels, change towns and cities, every day.
The night before they set out for some place on a map Sarah's shown him, some place they can maybe stay in for a few day, they spend an hour an internet cafe.
He runs Linux from a thumb drive and starts to explain to Sarah what he's doing, traceroutes, encryption, before he realizes she either already knows or she trusts him. When he's finally secure, they gather what information they can from news sites. Sarah recognizes a story about a car accident in front of an ancillary federal data center for what it is (The Ring) and the clean up around all the outages, at least, in some part, as Casey.
When he goes to settle the bill with the cafe manager, he turns around to see Sarah scribbling on a piece of paper. By the time he gets back over to her, she's holding the paper up in front of the screen. It's hastily drawn and mostly looks like nonsense, but Chuck can tell what it is. There are two smiling stick figures in a box in the upper left corner, "Facebook" written in block letters at the top, and then, above a bunch of scribbly lines, she's written "Ellie Woodcomb misses Chuck, but is OK. And so is everyone else."
His chest tightens and he picks Sarah up by the arms, pulling her into a hug that probably looks like he's trying to smother her. These are their love notes now.
(They burn it in the sink in the hotel when they get back, but he clutches it in his pocket the whole walk there.)
&&.
When Sarah had pointed their next destination out on the map, it was an empty space, no name, nothing, and so Chuck had assumed it was the tiny labeled city just about her fingernail. But it really was the no name place. There's maybe 100 people in the whole town, the same guy sells them drinks in the general store and then rents them a room, the only room, at the "inn" two doors down.
There's just one phone in the entire two mile area, a booth right in the middle of the main street. Chuck can see why Sarah thinks they can stay for a little bit, why it'll be hard to track them here -- there's nothing to track to.
(The part of him that's still the old Chuck had hoped, somehow, that they'd end up in a place he could finally watch Iron Man 2.)
Despite the lack of technology, it's not a bad town and their room is nice. The intricate quilts and blankets on the bed look warm and well-loved and the furniture is the kind that somebody made themselves, with their hands, far away from a factory.
They eat dinner with what seems like the whole population, in a big room full of benches and tables behind the inn. There's meat he doesn't recognize and vegetables he doesn't recognize and instead of trying to flash on it, he just eats. And when Sarah doesn't finish hers, he eats hers, too. (She switches plates with him right before the cook, a stout, motherly looking woman, wanders down the aisle toward them -- she claps her hands for Sarah's clean plate and gives a disapproving look to Chuck and the food still left on his.)
He's so full once dessert has been cleared that he doesn't immediately notice Sarah's gotten up from the table. When he does realize, every single thing he ate almost comes back up. He stands, frantically searching for her, when an old man puts a hand on his shoulder and points out the back door. Sarah's there with the cook and a few other women, her sleeves rolled up, washing dishes in a tub. He can't quite place the surge of pride he feels when she smiles and waves a soapy hand at him, but he goes with it.
By the end of the night, they're in an open field, sitting on logs around a fire. Sarah's under his arm and a teenage boy is playing a slow, pretty song on a beat up guitar. It's like everyone just migrated here and no one had to talk about it or make plans or anything. It's the kind of stuff that never happened back home, where Morgan wanted to bowl and Ellie wanted to paint pottery and Awesome wanted to rock climb. He has no idea how an entire town can be on the same page, and it doesn't make him miss everyone any less, but it's the nicest things have been in -- a long time.
Sarah's been pulled up to dance with at least half the town and she's a sport about it. More than a sport. She dances and laughs and Chuck can tell it's her. These are Sarah's dance moves, not ballroom dancing as taught by the CIA. He finally gets a chance to cut in and she whispers in his ear that she's ready for bed.
In any other relationship that would maybe mean she's ready for stuff in bed, but they've been so tired, so on edge, so worried they could be found and killed at any moment, that they haven't gotten in more than a few quick goodnight kisses since they left. They didn't finish anything they, ahem, started before. They didn't have a cleansing cry and then come at the exact same time. And even though he was sort of hoping for the frantic, sexy, danger-filled sex that movies had promised him for people on the run (even people on the run in Barstow), the most he's gotten is a lot of spooning and a small smile the one time he couldn't hide his morning wood.
(Mostly it's that she gave up her life for him, he's not going to start just demanding blow jobs and sex right now, or, uh, ever. They'll get there.)
When the song ends, he and Sarah say their goodnights and then suddenly everyone is watching them. Like really watching them. He can feel the hair on his arms stand on end, waiting for something to happen.
It does.
The oldest woman in the entire group, easily 80 or 90 years old, slowly makes her way to Sarah, tugging on her arm, until she bends down and the woman whispers in her ear.
Sarah looks -- embarrassed? pleased? -- and turns to Chuck .
"We have to kiss," she says in a low voice.
"Uh, why? I mean, OK, definitely, but. Why?" He almost didn't even ask, he's trained well enough from their cover by now, but he's actually interested in what that woman said.
Sarah angles into him even further.
"It's a tradition, when married couples --" she pauses, but he doesn't let his face change, "-- leave the fire, they have to kiss, to make sure no one goes to bed angry."
Chuck's not one to judge anybody's traditions (he is, after all, the kind of guy that has a seven step ritual before sitting down to play Call of Duty), but this immediately feels way more personal than a lot of the other stuff they've done for the sake of staying safe.
"Oh. Cool."
He bends down and Sarah leans up and it's supposed to be just a quick kiss. A Buy More kiss, an I'm-not-comfortable-with-PDA kiss.
(It's not going to be a quick kiss.)
She winds her hands up around him, her fingers combing through the hair at the top of his neck. He slides his arms around her waist and touches his lips to hers.
He tries to keep his mouth closed, tries to keep his tongue from sweeping out and into her mouth. But then she opens her mouth and slips her tongue into his mouth, just for a second, and he's gone.
He nips at her bottom lip, and then pulls away to try another angle before sliding his tongue past her teeth, wrestling with hers. It's an embarrassingly graphic kiss to be having in front of a bunch of people they don't know and want to stay around for a few more days, but he can't stop himself. He can feel a warm rush spreading through his body and forces himself to pull away before it's going to be impossible to walk comfortably back to their room.
She chases after his mouth, just the tiniest bit, when they break apart. Neither of them is anxious to look at the locals, but when he finally makes himself, most of them have gone back to the fire and the music. Only a few people are still facing their direction, mostly elderly ladies, and they're all beaming proudly, hands over their hearts.
Chuck rushes out some version of thankyouforeverything and Sarah does the same. He turns on his heels, somehow tripping over Sarah a little, even though they're in the middle of nothing but open field, and as he recovers, he grabs her hand. It's an impulse, but she twines her fingers with his anyway, and they set off for the inn.
He's looking mostly straight ahead on the walk, cheeks flushed and a little dizzy. Every time he sneaks a glance her way, she's doing the same, eyes forward, but they catch each other looking just a few steps before the hotel door and he almost swallows his tongue.
She fits the key into the room lock and, in an attempt to recover, he tries sounding professional or suave or task-oriented or anything that isn't Awkward Teenage Boy.
"How long do you think we'll be able to stay?"
Sarah shoulders the door open and says, "We'll see."
To anybody else, it'd probably sound ominous, but Chuck knows her well enough that it isn't. Usually it's, "We have to be out before sunrise" or "Don't unpack your bag" or "Chuck, what good is your gun if your clip is all the way over here?"
So he takes the "We'll see" as at least one night, if not two, or three.
He sits down in a chair by the window and starts fiddling with his fingers while Sarah does the nightly checks. His heart is still hammering in his chest and he'd only have to think about kissing her 10 minutes ago for his pants to get a little tighter, so he tries to keep talking.
"You know, I never thought I'd miss crappy TV so much," he can already tell he's using his rambling voice, but can't do anything to stop it.
She looks at him, "Yeah?"
"Yeah, I mean, what do people even do at night without TV?" The whole thing is out of his mouth for at least five seconds before he realizes what he's said and why Sarah's got a tiny little smirk and a twitching eyebrow.
"Oh, no, I mean, uh. What do they do with each other? Wait." Oh god.
He tries again, "No Daily Show, might as well just give up and go to bed, right?" Uggggh.
Sarah's wearing a full on smile now, she's stopped fiddling with the lamp on the bedside table and is just watching him like he's the TV show.
"I don't know, Chuck, you can't find anything to do?"
The way she says it, it's clear innuendo or flirting or just finally something fun and he stammers out some nonsense noise in reply.
Just because they've made out a handful times and he was her fake boyfriend for months and, oh yeah, he's in love with her, doesn't mean he has any idea how he's supposed to respond to something as weighted as that question.
He thinks about backing down and almost does, but then, you know what? What does he have to lose? She's not going to just up and abandon him if he says the wrong thing. It's not going to be all, "Oh, Chuck, that was way too cheesy of a line, I'm out! Good luck staying alive!"
(Because if that we're the case, that definitely would have happened already.)
So he decides: Aww, fuck it.
"Actually, Sarah, I've got some ideas."
One time, in college, he was having such bad luck with women that Bryce actually made a tape of Chuck running game in the student center and then broke it down, play by play. He managed to get a date for that Friday's party with the help, but he could never shake the image of his own overeager smile and the sound of his nervous not-smooth pick up voice.
It's exactly how he sounds right now.
Sarah doesn't seem to notice, she just tilts her head, all actually smooth, and says, "Let's hear them then."
If he tries talking again, if he tries doing anything that isn't getting out of this awkward little dance and into more certain territory, he's going to blow it. So he stands up and walks over to her, turns her fully toward him by the arm and kisses her.
She kisses back.
It's all arms and tongues and tripping over clothes and it couldn't have even been a minute before they're on the bed, on the nice old quilts, groping like it's the best way to diffuse a bomb.
She's in her bra and underwear and he's managed to get down to just his boxers and he's got his arms wrapped around her, fiddling with the clasp of her bra with, embarrassingly, both hands.
He finally realizes the way his hands are pinned between her back and the bed isn't helping things, so he leans them both up a little bit. He pops it open just as she bites down on the muscle where his neck meets his shoulder.
Oh my god, oh my god.
She licks at his neck in the same spot and he wants to do a million things at once. He wants to use his hands to grab her face and get her mouth back on his, but he also wants to use them to get her bra down her arms and off and make full use of that turn of events.
He settles for leaning them back down on the bed, one hand on her face, cupping her cheek, and forgoes getting the bra all the way off, using the other hand to cup her breast.
(He actually, briefly, in the service of multi-tasking and making the most of this before the inevitable interruption, tries to cup both her breasts in one hand. It doesn't work. She giggles though. A sexy, throaty giggle.)
He's finally gotten back to kissing her, and if the thing at the fire was explicit, this is pornographic. She slides her tongue against his at the same time that she slides a leg up around him, anchoring him to her. Then she grabs his ass through the thin cloth of his boxers and just fucking pulls.
Chuck takes the hint and starts up a rhythm of his own, bucking against her with whatever the opposite of spy finesse is. (Chuck finesse.)
It's enough friction that in a very short amount of time, it's all going to be over, so he pulls back, finally taking a second to get her bra fully off. Before he's realized that she's doing it, Sarah grabs the waistband of his boxers and the waistband of her underwear, and somehow manages to get them both down at the same time. Not off, but down, and better than Chuck could have done if he'd planned that move for months.
They both kick their legs trying to get the clothes the rest of the way off and Sarah's knee skirts dangerously close to his dick, but they get there, finally (finally). The condoms are in his bag all the way across the room and he actually spares a second to try and flash, to see if maybe somehow The Force is in the Intersect and he can just, like, summon them. Instead, Sarah breathes out against his mouth, "Pill, pill, Chuck, pill."
Because it was never going to be smooth, he pulls back and lets the moment break.
"Huh?"
Sarah doesn't seem as willing to let it go, tightening the leg still wrapped around him, but she looks up to explain anyway.
"I'm on the pill. And I know you're clean, it's, uh, in your file. And I'm cle --"
"The FBI has my sexual history?" He's not even sure why he's surprised.
She looks embarrassed (but still gorgeous and not wearing any clothes, so), "Yes, but I mean your medical records. You've never been treated for --"
He thinks about asking what if he'd just learned to live with burning when he pees, but decides it's not worth it. At all.
"Got it."
Now he's got to find a way to segue back into things. Sarah shifts her hips under him -- aaand there it is, back.
He takes a second to just look at her, Sarah Walker, Sarah. Walker. Naked. And under him. He's biting back a smile when she smiles at him and he can't keep it in any more. A stupid, face-splitting grin and he can feel how goofy it looks, so he bends down to kiss her again.
When he finally slides into her, after all this time, all the angst, the danger, everything, he'd like to be able to say there's a choir of angels or at least, like, a ringtone version of 'Ode to Joy.' What really happens is somewhere right in the middle of: do NOT come right now and ohmyfuckinggodthisfeelsamazing.
He does come eventually (soon), but so does she and only a few seconds (exactly four Mississippi's) after him. Even though they both get up and use the bathroom and Sarah, ever vigilant to even things like oral hygiene, takes the time to brush her teeth, neither of them bother with clothes. The quilts and blankets are warm enough and Sarah is practically radiating heat. In both a figurative and nearly literal sense.
In the morning they don't wake up spooning, but he's on his back, she's on her side facing him, and her hand is on his bicep. It's more than enough.
Sarah decides it would raise more attention if they just stayed in their room all day than if they went out -- he tries so, so hard though. They take a shower, together, and it doesn't involve fruit punch, and they get dressed. It's domestic or romantic or just plain nice and he doesn't remember until they walk out the door into a sleepy little nowhere town that things aren't actually OK after all.
(It should be said though: he's adjusting his definition of 'OK' every single day.)
&&.
When they've been there a week, Chuck's practically in a never-ending panic attack, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Mostly because they sort of have a life now. Nothing sustainable, nothing either of them could deal with forever, but it's something good, something vaguely (very vaguely) normal and now is usually the time a bad guy shows up. Or at the very least somebody's ex.
He mentions it to Sarah one night and she shrugs it off, but Chuck can see in the way her shoulders are set that she's thinking the same thing. (He can also see in the way she lines their shoes up right by the door every night and in the way she still cleans her gun at least once a day.)
Somehow, weirdly, they've both got jobs here (sort of). A fuse blows in the center of town on their third night there and Chuck fixes it without being asked. Sarah had cut him a look, but, seriously, how was he supposed to go unnoticed in a place with all of a hundred people? Ever since then, he's been fixing antique-looking lamps and trying to tune the five TV sets in the entire town, stuff like that.
Sarah ends up helping with food prep. Not kitchen stuff exactly, more like: Sarah can apparently break a chicken's neck like nobody's business. (And somehow that doesn't draw attention? He maybe rolls his eyes the first time she does it.)
Sometimes he gets home late, he gets asked to do some crazy errand after dinner, like rewire a stove, and when he crawls into bed, Sarah always backs up into him or at least throws a hand around some part of his body (ahem). They've slept together two more times since the first time (and he did get that blow job, in the shower one morning), so with everything so domestic and even, of course he's got to start worrying about The Ring and the CIA and oh my god, Ellie.
When he really thinks about it, this is what he decides:
It's probably less how well things are going and more that's it actually been almost two weeks now. Two weeks is a definite and long period of time. No one's going to forgive that time he just up and disappeared for two weeks. No one's going to forget it, which means every second they stay out, stay away, the closer they are to cementing this as their life forever. Not this town exactly, but all of it, all of this. Including how people could be suffering just so he could get the girl.
All this time in a quiet town, with so many hours to just do all that thinking, was never going to end well. He knew it and Sarah knew it, which is why, when he suggests they maybe take a trip to a slightly bigger town, she resists, but only on a token level.
The fly-by-night taxi operation they'd used to get here wasn't answering phone calls anymore, so Chuck forces a flash (after, oh, only an hour of trying) and figures out how to fix the pick up that's parked on the edges of town. He justifies the whole thing by telling himself that when they get back, the town will finally have a decent running car and he's helping, right?
(It also helps, a lot, that seeing him covered in grease and sweat turns out to be a Thing for Sarah and he files that away for whenever they finally figure everything out.)
They leave town early in the morning, just barely after sunrise, but the whole town is out to see them off. Sarah whispers to him, "They're saying we're not coming back," and he starts to sweat a little that maybe they know something he and Sarah don't.
Even though they'd only been in that town, that routine, for a week, they'd hit a rhythm. A place where they talked like a normal couple. He'd found out she was once on a swim team, and she found out he once used the letters CIA (Chuck is Awesome) whenever he got a high score on an arcade game. She'd laughed at his story, and he'd tucked hers away next to her middle name and the birthmark on her back.
Back in the car, her driving, of course, even though he fixed the truck, it's already not the same. As soon as the town's out of view, they've slid back into old roles, asset and handler, madly in love and trying to deny it.
It's not uncomfortable, but it's different, again, and so he's thankful when she speaks, even if it's basically to put it back on him.
"You OK?" She glances at him before turning her eyes back to what passes for a road.
"Yeah, yeah, I think so, yeah." He can't even answer that question for himself, let alone her.
"There's a chance that we --"
She pauses and he fills in the gap a thousand times. That we made a mistake? Should go back? Have fucked everything up beyond repair? Are in danger?
"-- might not like what we find."
Oh, that's great.
"We have to look though, right? I mean, it's kind of selfish, what we did," he says it low and quiet.
Sarah's face betrays her for just a second and he feels awful for -- well, for telling the truth. And that's exactly what skittered across her face, because she knows, too.
They spend the rest of the ride in relative silence. He hums sometimes and she talks to herself, quiet and tactical, when she thinks he's sleeping, but it's almost like it's already over.
When they finally get to an actual city, the sun is setting and his stomach is growling. They have one last thing, one last date, whatever, at a restaurant. She holds his hand on top of the table and he bumps her knee with his under it. They stop to kiss right at the door on the way out and an angry employee yells at them. Oh yeah, it's over.
They leave the pick up truck in the restaurant lot (Chuck thinks, Have fun getting that towed, you jerk. and is immediately upset that it really isn't going to benefit the town at all) and set out for an internet cafe on foot.
He pays for an hour up front and spends 20 minutes of it putting in place all the security. They read all the big papers, BBC, CNN and it's Ring handiwork and general bad guy handiwork and everything awful about the world. What he thought he'd see -- a pointed, clear reason to go back, a purpose for them, is lacking. With the time clock just a few minutes away from terminating their connection, Chuck navigates to the Burbank Leader. It's risky and, eventually, someone will find that and track them here, but they'll be gone by then and he just -- he has to look.
There it is, right on the front page: Westside Hospital Bomb Scare
How arrogant of him to think this is about him, but it is. Probably.
(Or it's some other evil thing, but either way, Ellie, Devon: trouble.)
Sarah puts a hand on his, the one covering the mouse, and she moves them both up to the 'x' to close the window.
"We'll go."
He kisses her, slow and soft and sad, and it's a thank you and another ending and he can only hope they at least get one more beginning.
&&.
After the train ride, the plane ride and the cab ride, there's barely anything left from the bomb scare, but Chuck's enough of a spy to know that just means somebody did a good job cleaning up.
He's not even sure where to start (and more than a little unnerved by the extra thorough frisking her got from airport security, even if it didn't turn into anything). Sarah's counting down the minutes, the seconds, until somebody finds them.
"As soon as we pass through the first camera, they'll see us," she'd said. "We just have to hope it's the good guys."
The "good" guys is pretty relative at this point, and Chuck's already imagining his future in a bunker and Sarah's in, oh god, a prison for treason, maybe? You don't really get out of that twice, right? But they've made it as far as the hospital front doors without anything happening, even if it's only a matter of time.
Without knowing what he's looking for, Chuck ends up just scanning faces, trying to get the Intersect to hit on something, when he sees one that Chuck, not the Intersect, recognizes.
Ellie.
Sarah sees her at the same time and has a hand out to stop Chuck, but it's too late, Ellie's running across the lobby, a blur in blue scrubs, coming right toward them. "Chuck! Chuck! Sarah!"
He pauses for a second, trying to figure out why she doesn't seem angry or confused or anything and just before she launches herself on him in a hug, he remembers he'd told her he was going away. Back when it was a lie about spy camp (even if he knew they were going to run).
Ellie's going a mile a minute, trying to catch them up on everything and get caught up on them and she's hugging both of them with one hand and trying to call Devon with the other. Chuck's so, so happy to see her that it doesn't even immediately register that they've gotten themselves almost entirely surrounded.
Sarah's noticed though. He's not sure where she got a gun, or if it's just out of habit, but her hand flies to behind her back and Chuck starts trying to get Ellie away before things get, uh, confrontational. Luckily her phone alarm goes off, "Oh, gotta go! Come over for dinner, both of you!"
And she darts off. (He feels sick about how surprised he is that no one tried to stop her. He feels even sicker when he realizes they could just as easily get her on a different floor.)
He watches Ellie go until she rounds a corner and then, at the feeling of Sarah's hand on him again, he pulls himself back to focus. It's flashes like rapid fire, like he's never had before, his face is even starting to hurt -- Ring agent, CIA, Ring agent, CIA, Ring agent, NSA, Ring agent -- Casey?
Well, no one exactly beat anyone here, looks like. Everyone's got a hand on a pocket or a waistband and Casey's not even taking the time to glower at them, everything is that close to breaking.
It breaks.
Chuck has no idea who shot first or what he's supposed to do and then he's just stopped thinking. Fists, gunshots, yelling, blood, it's everywhere and it's in slow motion and it's flying by and then it's over.
He's standing, Casey's standing and one other guy (a "good" guy) is standing, everyone else is on the ground and hospital personnel are trying to swarm, but Casey's started waving his gun around. He's pointing at bodies, barking, "Yes, yes, no, no, yes, NO."
Everything's still blurring, but then, oh, oh, oh my god, Sarah.
"Casey! CASEY. Where is Sarah?"
He feels like his voice is coming out in a whisper, he's had nightmares just like this, when he hears Ellie's voice cut through everything.
"Sarah!"
He follows her voice and Ellie's running toward Sarah, who's slumped against a wall clutching her side. It's so much like Bryce, he throws up. No one notices.
Somehow he gets over to Sarah and Ellie and Sarah's groaning and Ellie's trying to ask him what happened, but all he can say is fix her, fix her, fix her, fix her.
(She does.)
&&.
It's sort of (it is) a huge mess.
Casey won't even talk to them.
Ellie's had to be told the story so many times, Chuck's starting to believe that's the way it actually happened. ("We just got caught up in the middle of something. Sarah picked up a gun off the floor. I don't know why Casey was there.")
Sarah spends two weeks in the hospital, but makes a full recovery.
Chuck doesn't leave the hospital until she does.
He tells her he loves her the day she's released. She lets him carry her out to the car. It's kind of her version of "ditto," he thinks.
When they finally get in for a debriefing, Chuck half-figures it's an ambush. Like that they're walking into their sentencing. He even goes out of his way to say extra long goodbyes to Ellie and Awesome and texts Morgan before they get there. If he's going to spend his life in a basement from now on, it's been a good run. And if he's going to end up dead right now, he's already decided he's going to make sure Sarah doesn't.
(Like in a way that he practiced jumping in front of pretend bullets last night, in his bedroom, onto his bed. It's going to be Chuck, not the Intersect, that protects her, even if it kills him. Which, you know, it might.)
But then only Casey's in the room, which doesn't actually mean anything, but he doesn't have his gun out and Beckman's on the screen and, oh, no way. No death? No bunker?
He's smiling, but no one else is and he thinks maybe he's ahead of himself. Casey shifts on his feet, and, ah, look, there's his gun.
Suddenly though, Beckman's speaking, they're going to use this thing between the two of them. A husband and wife team are heading up a NorCal cell of The Ring, looking to recruit another couple.
Beckman plows on, this isn't playing house. These two are serious, they're going to be expecting Chuck and Sarah to have intimate knowledge of each other and they will be asking. There's no intel yet to indicate why they're looking specifically for a couple, but that's part of what they're looking into.
For now, she says, Chuck and Sarah are released, but officially censured. Their flight will board at 0600 tomorrow.
The screen goes blank.
Chuck can't believe his luck, it's like, really, really ridiculous good luck.
(Except that they didn't actually get away from danger, they just went right back to it, slightly more open about their relationship or feelings -- it's going to have be enough for now.)
Even Sarah looks dumbfounded, right up until Casey finally speaks to them.
"Enjoy your joint burial plot."
It's the way he says it more than anything, it's not actually as mean as it sounds, so Chuck grins at him and scoots out before Casey changes his mind.
They board the flight and meet up with the Ring couple.
That night at dinner, they're asked about their honeymoon, drilled really, and they talk about some no name little town with a campfire and a single phone booth.
(Everyone buys it because it's true.)
&&.
fandom: Chuck.
pairing: Chuck/Sarah.
rating: R.
words: 7378.
spoilers: Through 0301, where it goes AU. So, spoilers through that.
disclaimer: Fiction. I don't own anything here.
notes: I can't even explain what happened with this. I got so into Chuck, like, so damn fast and then I went crazy, mainlining what I could, where I could, and then I was like, "I think I'm going to write a fic!" And this happened. So. It's an AU from about the middle of Season 3's premiere. I DON'T KNOW WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME.
They go on the run.
(Again.)
The start of the train ride he's so jittery, leg bouncing up and down and up and down with adrenaline. She puts her hand on his thigh to stop him, it's distracting, other passengers are looking, and, really, drawing attention to themselves 20 minutes into being, like, fugitives is not a good start.
But she leaves her hand there and in deference to that little concession he spends the next hour, leg still, thinking of every movie he can where people are on the lamb.
He's stuck on Thelma and Louise for 20 minutes, when he finally hits on Bonnie and Clyde. It's cool and he's pleased, but then he remembers how that whole thing ended.
(Bloody gunfire death aside -- don't think about it, don't think about it -- he remains slightly and superficially pleased that somehow he's ended up with a woman actually hotter than young Faye Dunaway, even if he's no Warren Beatty.)
It's not until Sarah's sleeping, sitting straight up, face forward, like she's actually awake just in the middle of some long blink, that what they're doing, slams, kicks in his chest. They're not going to Barstow, they're not looking for anybody, they're just running. Toward nothing (toward freedom). Forever. He maybe groans out load. Her eyes shoot open and even though her head hasn't moved at all, it's like she's hovering with just her gaze or something.
When he puts a hand to cover hers on his leg, he squeezes so tight that her fingertips turn dark red before she finally says, "Chuck?"
"Hector," he corrects.
"Hector. What's going on, Hector."
It's not even a question, not even something he has a choice in answering.
"This is -- Sarah. This is serious."
It's pathetic and obvious and he sounds wimpy, but it's not actually about the threat to him or anything like that, it's about her, what she gave up, what he's doing to her (it always is).
"I know."
It's just another cold, hard fact, a statement, but he can see in her face that she's not wavering at all, not even a little bit, which is nice, because he's about six seconds away from puking. The motion of the train isn't helping.
Chuck's not sure what he's supposed to say to that, to Sarah giving up everything and committing just to him. She's got nothing else now. Just him. He's only got her, too, but that's like, oh, I've only oxygen. It's the opposite of what feels like years ago, standing in his tuxedo, hearing about her leaving in the morning, for the Intersect, with Bryce.
(He uses every single thing in him, every ounce of -- whatever, to not think about Ellie and Awesome and Morgan. Or Bryce, for that matter -- or his dad -- or. Oh god.)
He feels her fingers wiggling under him and he realizes he's still crushing her hand. It's embarrassing, to be this shaken up, he's got to be it for her. But this is -- some shit.
She turns her palm up and laces her fingers through his and although it's probably still tighter than it should be, his grip isn't cutting off circulation now, at least.
They stay like that through the first stop, white knuckled as passengers walk by them, boarding, de-boarding. When a man drops his bag just behind them and bends to pick it up, they both tense, watch for the glint of a gun or a threat. He picks it up and shuffles on, but the muscles in the back of his neck don't unknot and he figures they never will.
(There's a brief thought, a tiny little fantasy, where Sarah rubs the knots out for him. When he realizes that could happen, it could actually, really happen and not just for a cover, his pulse jumps.)
&&.
They've been on the train for hours and hours, he's not even sure where they're going, but they haven't made a stop in a while and he's maybe getting a little restless. They've only left their seats once, to use the bathroom, him watching the door for Sarah and then her watching it for him.
When he comes out, drying his hands on his pants, a bald, way-too-tan guy in an expensive suit is trying to chat her up in a language Chuck doesn't understand, but the Intersect does. She's indulging him (no need to draw attention by being rude), but Chuck can see the muscles working in her jaw. He puts his hand on the small of her back, nodding at the guy, and they walk away.
(He gives himself only two seconds for a shit-eating grin as they walk down the aisle, but she catches him anyway. She smiles, too -- smaller, not as cocky, but it's there and he made it happen.)
It's nothing but scenery out the window, miles and miles of middle of nowhere landscape, and he's finally starting to fall asleep, Sarah paging through an old newspaper next to him, when a woman at the front of their car screams. It's more like a yell, or a yelp, a throaty thing that sounds like it's coming right from her guts, but he and Sarah are on their feet anyway.
She's in labor.
Of course.
There's all sorts of screaming, people asking for a doctor, and Chuck can see on Sarah's face that she's trying to figure out if she can do it, if she can deliver the baby.
He flashes. She notices.
"Sarah --"
"Chuck," she's whispering, "Just wait. If no one else comes forward, you can do it. But being the hero -- again -- isn't exactly low profile."
They wait. The woman is yelling, contractions coming closer and closer together. Passengers have scattered into other cars looking for somebody, anybody, to help, but, despite two dentists and a chiropractor, no one's coming forward that would have done this before.
Sarah nods at him and he starts making his way down the aisle as fast he can. They've moved the woman into the row of seats at the front, the ones he tried to sit in when they first got on board because of the legroom, but Sarah had told him no.
He finally gets up there, trying to figure out what he can say (I'm not a doctor, but I can deliver this baby because of a government computer in my brain?) and the lady is just letting out a steady stream of swear words and groans.
He opens his mouth to speak (he's just going to say he's a doctor), when an older woman that barely comes up to his chest is there. Something about she retired years ago, but they'll get this baby out safely, all in a language he still can't believe he knows.
Sarah's eyes meet Chuck's and he slinks back to their seats. Sarah hands him his coat and he passes it up to the front. A nice, expensive, warm hospital gown the only thing he's going to contribute.
(The woman names the baby Victor after the doctor's husband. Which is fine because the kid didn't look like a Chuck, but still.)
By the time they finally get off the train in some city he's never heard of, Chuck's not exactly regretting the decision to go with Sarah, but he's definitely got something going on. What's regret when you don't want to change what you chose, but still feel bad about it? Depressed?
Sarah watches him the whole cab ride into town, it's like she knows, but doesn't want to bring it up. Like maybe it'll just go away. When they've checked into their hotel room, tossing what little luggage they did bring onto a rickety table, he can't keep it in anymore.
She's checking the room out, the locks on the window, the deadbolt, the vent in the bathroom, when he sits down on the bed and just blurts it out.
"I could've helped, Sarah."
She pauses, crouched next to an electrical outlet, and looks at him. "And if no one else could, you would have, but we have to be careful. Any attention is bad attention right now."
"I don't mean the woman, I mean everyone. This thing, the new Intersect, I could've learned to be a real spy, I could've learned how to use it, and I could've helped people."
Sarah stands up and walks in front of him, hands on his shoulders, waiting until he looks up at her.
"Do you want to go back?" There's no edge to her voice, barely any emotion in it at all, but he still nearly flinches.
It's not like there's a clear answer to any of this. "Do you want to go back?" could be "Do you want to help people and save the world?" and then the answer would be yes.
But it could also be: "Do you want to give up Sarah? Do you want to give up any shot at ever waking up next to her, a dog asleep on the edge of the bed and a daughter with curly blonde hair and Star Wars pajamas in the next room? Do you want to give up everything else?"
The fact that he knows exactly where those Star Wars pajamas are in the Target back home is a pretty clear sign that, no, he doesn't want to give it up.
When she moves her hands from his shoulders to his face, he realizes he hasn't said anything. But he still doesn't have anything to say, so he just wraps his arms around her and buries his face in her stomach.
She lets him stay like that for a long time. Long enough that he gets his breathing in sync with hers and long enough that he decides, at least right now, they can't go back. Sarah wants to help people, too, and they'll find a way, but they're no good to anybody dead or locked in a bunker.
If changing or saving the world is his purpose, then they're going to figure it out and do it together. He's not going to (can't) do it alone and going back now would mean he'd have to try.
He finally says, muffled and quiet into her shirt, "No."
Sarah pulls back and gives him a kiss on his forehead, like a blessing.
&&.
The first week they change hotels, change towns and cities, every day.
The night before they set out for some place on a map Sarah's shown him, some place they can maybe stay in for a few day, they spend an hour an internet cafe.
He runs Linux from a thumb drive and starts to explain to Sarah what he's doing, traceroutes, encryption, before he realizes she either already knows or she trusts him. When he's finally secure, they gather what information they can from news sites. Sarah recognizes a story about a car accident in front of an ancillary federal data center for what it is (The Ring) and the clean up around all the outages, at least, in some part, as Casey.
When he goes to settle the bill with the cafe manager, he turns around to see Sarah scribbling on a piece of paper. By the time he gets back over to her, she's holding the paper up in front of the screen. It's hastily drawn and mostly looks like nonsense, but Chuck can tell what it is. There are two smiling stick figures in a box in the upper left corner, "Facebook" written in block letters at the top, and then, above a bunch of scribbly lines, she's written "Ellie Woodcomb misses Chuck, but is OK. And so is everyone else."
His chest tightens and he picks Sarah up by the arms, pulling her into a hug that probably looks like he's trying to smother her. These are their love notes now.
(They burn it in the sink in the hotel when they get back, but he clutches it in his pocket the whole walk there.)
&&.
When Sarah had pointed their next destination out on the map, it was an empty space, no name, nothing, and so Chuck had assumed it was the tiny labeled city just about her fingernail. But it really was the no name place. There's maybe 100 people in the whole town, the same guy sells them drinks in the general store and then rents them a room, the only room, at the "inn" two doors down.
There's just one phone in the entire two mile area, a booth right in the middle of the main street. Chuck can see why Sarah thinks they can stay for a little bit, why it'll be hard to track them here -- there's nothing to track to.
(The part of him that's still the old Chuck had hoped, somehow, that they'd end up in a place he could finally watch Iron Man 2.)
Despite the lack of technology, it's not a bad town and their room is nice. The intricate quilts and blankets on the bed look warm and well-loved and the furniture is the kind that somebody made themselves, with their hands, far away from a factory.
They eat dinner with what seems like the whole population, in a big room full of benches and tables behind the inn. There's meat he doesn't recognize and vegetables he doesn't recognize and instead of trying to flash on it, he just eats. And when Sarah doesn't finish hers, he eats hers, too. (She switches plates with him right before the cook, a stout, motherly looking woman, wanders down the aisle toward them -- she claps her hands for Sarah's clean plate and gives a disapproving look to Chuck and the food still left on his.)
He's so full once dessert has been cleared that he doesn't immediately notice Sarah's gotten up from the table. When he does realize, every single thing he ate almost comes back up. He stands, frantically searching for her, when an old man puts a hand on his shoulder and points out the back door. Sarah's there with the cook and a few other women, her sleeves rolled up, washing dishes in a tub. He can't quite place the surge of pride he feels when she smiles and waves a soapy hand at him, but he goes with it.
By the end of the night, they're in an open field, sitting on logs around a fire. Sarah's under his arm and a teenage boy is playing a slow, pretty song on a beat up guitar. It's like everyone just migrated here and no one had to talk about it or make plans or anything. It's the kind of stuff that never happened back home, where Morgan wanted to bowl and Ellie wanted to paint pottery and Awesome wanted to rock climb. He has no idea how an entire town can be on the same page, and it doesn't make him miss everyone any less, but it's the nicest things have been in -- a long time.
Sarah's been pulled up to dance with at least half the town and she's a sport about it. More than a sport. She dances and laughs and Chuck can tell it's her. These are Sarah's dance moves, not ballroom dancing as taught by the CIA. He finally gets a chance to cut in and she whispers in his ear that she's ready for bed.
In any other relationship that would maybe mean she's ready for stuff in bed, but they've been so tired, so on edge, so worried they could be found and killed at any moment, that they haven't gotten in more than a few quick goodnight kisses since they left. They didn't finish anything they, ahem, started before. They didn't have a cleansing cry and then come at the exact same time. And even though he was sort of hoping for the frantic, sexy, danger-filled sex that movies had promised him for people on the run (even people on the run in Barstow), the most he's gotten is a lot of spooning and a small smile the one time he couldn't hide his morning wood.
(Mostly it's that she gave up her life for him, he's not going to start just demanding blow jobs and sex right now, or, uh, ever. They'll get there.)
When the song ends, he and Sarah say their goodnights and then suddenly everyone is watching them. Like really watching them. He can feel the hair on his arms stand on end, waiting for something to happen.
It does.
The oldest woman in the entire group, easily 80 or 90 years old, slowly makes her way to Sarah, tugging on her arm, until she bends down and the woman whispers in her ear.
Sarah looks -- embarrassed? pleased? -- and turns to Chuck .
"We have to kiss," she says in a low voice.
"Uh, why? I mean, OK, definitely, but. Why?" He almost didn't even ask, he's trained well enough from their cover by now, but he's actually interested in what that woman said.
Sarah angles into him even further.
"It's a tradition, when married couples --" she pauses, but he doesn't let his face change, "-- leave the fire, they have to kiss, to make sure no one goes to bed angry."
Chuck's not one to judge anybody's traditions (he is, after all, the kind of guy that has a seven step ritual before sitting down to play Call of Duty), but this immediately feels way more personal than a lot of the other stuff they've done for the sake of staying safe.
"Oh. Cool."
He bends down and Sarah leans up and it's supposed to be just a quick kiss. A Buy More kiss, an I'm-not-comfortable-with-PDA kiss.
(It's not going to be a quick kiss.)
She winds her hands up around him, her fingers combing through the hair at the top of his neck. He slides his arms around her waist and touches his lips to hers.
He tries to keep his mouth closed, tries to keep his tongue from sweeping out and into her mouth. But then she opens her mouth and slips her tongue into his mouth, just for a second, and he's gone.
He nips at her bottom lip, and then pulls away to try another angle before sliding his tongue past her teeth, wrestling with hers. It's an embarrassingly graphic kiss to be having in front of a bunch of people they don't know and want to stay around for a few more days, but he can't stop himself. He can feel a warm rush spreading through his body and forces himself to pull away before it's going to be impossible to walk comfortably back to their room.
She chases after his mouth, just the tiniest bit, when they break apart. Neither of them is anxious to look at the locals, but when he finally makes himself, most of them have gone back to the fire and the music. Only a few people are still facing their direction, mostly elderly ladies, and they're all beaming proudly, hands over their hearts.
Chuck rushes out some version of thankyouforeverything and Sarah does the same. He turns on his heels, somehow tripping over Sarah a little, even though they're in the middle of nothing but open field, and as he recovers, he grabs her hand. It's an impulse, but she twines her fingers with his anyway, and they set off for the inn.
He's looking mostly straight ahead on the walk, cheeks flushed and a little dizzy. Every time he sneaks a glance her way, she's doing the same, eyes forward, but they catch each other looking just a few steps before the hotel door and he almost swallows his tongue.
She fits the key into the room lock and, in an attempt to recover, he tries sounding professional or suave or task-oriented or anything that isn't Awkward Teenage Boy.
"How long do you think we'll be able to stay?"
Sarah shoulders the door open and says, "We'll see."
To anybody else, it'd probably sound ominous, but Chuck knows her well enough that it isn't. Usually it's, "We have to be out before sunrise" or "Don't unpack your bag" or "Chuck, what good is your gun if your clip is all the way over here?"
So he takes the "We'll see" as at least one night, if not two, or three.
He sits down in a chair by the window and starts fiddling with his fingers while Sarah does the nightly checks. His heart is still hammering in his chest and he'd only have to think about kissing her 10 minutes ago for his pants to get a little tighter, so he tries to keep talking.
"You know, I never thought I'd miss crappy TV so much," he can already tell he's using his rambling voice, but can't do anything to stop it.
She looks at him, "Yeah?"
"Yeah, I mean, what do people even do at night without TV?" The whole thing is out of his mouth for at least five seconds before he realizes what he's said and why Sarah's got a tiny little smirk and a twitching eyebrow.
"Oh, no, I mean, uh. What do they do with each other? Wait." Oh god.
He tries again, "No Daily Show, might as well just give up and go to bed, right?" Uggggh.
Sarah's wearing a full on smile now, she's stopped fiddling with the lamp on the bedside table and is just watching him like he's the TV show.
"I don't know, Chuck, you can't find anything to do?"
The way she says it, it's clear innuendo or flirting or just finally something fun and he stammers out some nonsense noise in reply.
Just because they've made out a handful times and he was her fake boyfriend for months and, oh yeah, he's in love with her, doesn't mean he has any idea how he's supposed to respond to something as weighted as that question.
He thinks about backing down and almost does, but then, you know what? What does he have to lose? She's not going to just up and abandon him if he says the wrong thing. It's not going to be all, "Oh, Chuck, that was way too cheesy of a line, I'm out! Good luck staying alive!"
(Because if that we're the case, that definitely would have happened already.)
So he decides: Aww, fuck it.
"Actually, Sarah, I've got some ideas."
One time, in college, he was having such bad luck with women that Bryce actually made a tape of Chuck running game in the student center and then broke it down, play by play. He managed to get a date for that Friday's party with the help, but he could never shake the image of his own overeager smile and the sound of his nervous not-smooth pick up voice.
It's exactly how he sounds right now.
Sarah doesn't seem to notice, she just tilts her head, all actually smooth, and says, "Let's hear them then."
If he tries talking again, if he tries doing anything that isn't getting out of this awkward little dance and into more certain territory, he's going to blow it. So he stands up and walks over to her, turns her fully toward him by the arm and kisses her.
She kisses back.
It's all arms and tongues and tripping over clothes and it couldn't have even been a minute before they're on the bed, on the nice old quilts, groping like it's the best way to diffuse a bomb.
She's in her bra and underwear and he's managed to get down to just his boxers and he's got his arms wrapped around her, fiddling with the clasp of her bra with, embarrassingly, both hands.
He finally realizes the way his hands are pinned between her back and the bed isn't helping things, so he leans them both up a little bit. He pops it open just as she bites down on the muscle where his neck meets his shoulder.
Oh my god, oh my god.
She licks at his neck in the same spot and he wants to do a million things at once. He wants to use his hands to grab her face and get her mouth back on his, but he also wants to use them to get her bra down her arms and off and make full use of that turn of events.
He settles for leaning them back down on the bed, one hand on her face, cupping her cheek, and forgoes getting the bra all the way off, using the other hand to cup her breast.
(He actually, briefly, in the service of multi-tasking and making the most of this before the inevitable interruption, tries to cup both her breasts in one hand. It doesn't work. She giggles though. A sexy, throaty giggle.)
He's finally gotten back to kissing her, and if the thing at the fire was explicit, this is pornographic. She slides her tongue against his at the same time that she slides a leg up around him, anchoring him to her. Then she grabs his ass through the thin cloth of his boxers and just fucking pulls.
Chuck takes the hint and starts up a rhythm of his own, bucking against her with whatever the opposite of spy finesse is. (Chuck finesse.)
It's enough friction that in a very short amount of time, it's all going to be over, so he pulls back, finally taking a second to get her bra fully off. Before he's realized that she's doing it, Sarah grabs the waistband of his boxers and the waistband of her underwear, and somehow manages to get them both down at the same time. Not off, but down, and better than Chuck could have done if he'd planned that move for months.
They both kick their legs trying to get the clothes the rest of the way off and Sarah's knee skirts dangerously close to his dick, but they get there, finally (finally). The condoms are in his bag all the way across the room and he actually spares a second to try and flash, to see if maybe somehow The Force is in the Intersect and he can just, like, summon them. Instead, Sarah breathes out against his mouth, "Pill, pill, Chuck, pill."
Because it was never going to be smooth, he pulls back and lets the moment break.
"Huh?"
Sarah doesn't seem as willing to let it go, tightening the leg still wrapped around him, but she looks up to explain anyway.
"I'm on the pill. And I know you're clean, it's, uh, in your file. And I'm cle --"
"The FBI has my sexual history?" He's not even sure why he's surprised.
She looks embarrassed (but still gorgeous and not wearing any clothes, so), "Yes, but I mean your medical records. You've never been treated for --"
He thinks about asking what if he'd just learned to live with burning when he pees, but decides it's not worth it. At all.
"Got it."
Now he's got to find a way to segue back into things. Sarah shifts her hips under him -- aaand there it is, back.
He takes a second to just look at her, Sarah Walker, Sarah. Walker. Naked. And under him. He's biting back a smile when she smiles at him and he can't keep it in any more. A stupid, face-splitting grin and he can feel how goofy it looks, so he bends down to kiss her again.
When he finally slides into her, after all this time, all the angst, the danger, everything, he'd like to be able to say there's a choir of angels or at least, like, a ringtone version of 'Ode to Joy.' What really happens is somewhere right in the middle of: do NOT come right now and ohmyfuckinggodthisfeelsamazing.
He does come eventually (soon), but so does she and only a few seconds (exactly four Mississippi's) after him. Even though they both get up and use the bathroom and Sarah, ever vigilant to even things like oral hygiene, takes the time to brush her teeth, neither of them bother with clothes. The quilts and blankets are warm enough and Sarah is practically radiating heat. In both a figurative and nearly literal sense.
In the morning they don't wake up spooning, but he's on his back, she's on her side facing him, and her hand is on his bicep. It's more than enough.
Sarah decides it would raise more attention if they just stayed in their room all day than if they went out -- he tries so, so hard though. They take a shower, together, and it doesn't involve fruit punch, and they get dressed. It's domestic or romantic or just plain nice and he doesn't remember until they walk out the door into a sleepy little nowhere town that things aren't actually OK after all.
(It should be said though: he's adjusting his definition of 'OK' every single day.)
&&.
When they've been there a week, Chuck's practically in a never-ending panic attack, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Mostly because they sort of have a life now. Nothing sustainable, nothing either of them could deal with forever, but it's something good, something vaguely (very vaguely) normal and now is usually the time a bad guy shows up. Or at the very least somebody's ex.
He mentions it to Sarah one night and she shrugs it off, but Chuck can see in the way her shoulders are set that she's thinking the same thing. (He can also see in the way she lines their shoes up right by the door every night and in the way she still cleans her gun at least once a day.)
Somehow, weirdly, they've both got jobs here (sort of). A fuse blows in the center of town on their third night there and Chuck fixes it without being asked. Sarah had cut him a look, but, seriously, how was he supposed to go unnoticed in a place with all of a hundred people? Ever since then, he's been fixing antique-looking lamps and trying to tune the five TV sets in the entire town, stuff like that.
Sarah ends up helping with food prep. Not kitchen stuff exactly, more like: Sarah can apparently break a chicken's neck like nobody's business. (And somehow that doesn't draw attention? He maybe rolls his eyes the first time she does it.)
Sometimes he gets home late, he gets asked to do some crazy errand after dinner, like rewire a stove, and when he crawls into bed, Sarah always backs up into him or at least throws a hand around some part of his body (ahem). They've slept together two more times since the first time (and he did get that blow job, in the shower one morning), so with everything so domestic and even, of course he's got to start worrying about The Ring and the CIA and oh my god, Ellie.
When he really thinks about it, this is what he decides:
It's probably less how well things are going and more that's it actually been almost two weeks now. Two weeks is a definite and long period of time. No one's going to forgive that time he just up and disappeared for two weeks. No one's going to forget it, which means every second they stay out, stay away, the closer they are to cementing this as their life forever. Not this town exactly, but all of it, all of this. Including how people could be suffering just so he could get the girl.
All this time in a quiet town, with so many hours to just do all that thinking, was never going to end well. He knew it and Sarah knew it, which is why, when he suggests they maybe take a trip to a slightly bigger town, she resists, but only on a token level.
The fly-by-night taxi operation they'd used to get here wasn't answering phone calls anymore, so Chuck forces a flash (after, oh, only an hour of trying) and figures out how to fix the pick up that's parked on the edges of town. He justifies the whole thing by telling himself that when they get back, the town will finally have a decent running car and he's helping, right?
(It also helps, a lot, that seeing him covered in grease and sweat turns out to be a Thing for Sarah and he files that away for whenever they finally figure everything out.)
They leave town early in the morning, just barely after sunrise, but the whole town is out to see them off. Sarah whispers to him, "They're saying we're not coming back," and he starts to sweat a little that maybe they know something he and Sarah don't.
Even though they'd only been in that town, that routine, for a week, they'd hit a rhythm. A place where they talked like a normal couple. He'd found out she was once on a swim team, and she found out he once used the letters CIA (Chuck is Awesome) whenever he got a high score on an arcade game. She'd laughed at his story, and he'd tucked hers away next to her middle name and the birthmark on her back.
Back in the car, her driving, of course, even though he fixed the truck, it's already not the same. As soon as the town's out of view, they've slid back into old roles, asset and handler, madly in love and trying to deny it.
It's not uncomfortable, but it's different, again, and so he's thankful when she speaks, even if it's basically to put it back on him.
"You OK?" She glances at him before turning her eyes back to what passes for a road.
"Yeah, yeah, I think so, yeah." He can't even answer that question for himself, let alone her.
"There's a chance that we --"
She pauses and he fills in the gap a thousand times. That we made a mistake? Should go back? Have fucked everything up beyond repair? Are in danger?
"-- might not like what we find."
Oh, that's great.
"We have to look though, right? I mean, it's kind of selfish, what we did," he says it low and quiet.
Sarah's face betrays her for just a second and he feels awful for -- well, for telling the truth. And that's exactly what skittered across her face, because she knows, too.
They spend the rest of the ride in relative silence. He hums sometimes and she talks to herself, quiet and tactical, when she thinks he's sleeping, but it's almost like it's already over.
When they finally get to an actual city, the sun is setting and his stomach is growling. They have one last thing, one last date, whatever, at a restaurant. She holds his hand on top of the table and he bumps her knee with his under it. They stop to kiss right at the door on the way out and an angry employee yells at them. Oh yeah, it's over.
They leave the pick up truck in the restaurant lot (Chuck thinks, Have fun getting that towed, you jerk. and is immediately upset that it really isn't going to benefit the town at all) and set out for an internet cafe on foot.
He pays for an hour up front and spends 20 minutes of it putting in place all the security. They read all the big papers, BBC, CNN and it's Ring handiwork and general bad guy handiwork and everything awful about the world. What he thought he'd see -- a pointed, clear reason to go back, a purpose for them, is lacking. With the time clock just a few minutes away from terminating their connection, Chuck navigates to the Burbank Leader. It's risky and, eventually, someone will find that and track them here, but they'll be gone by then and he just -- he has to look.
There it is, right on the front page: Westside Hospital Bomb Scare
How arrogant of him to think this is about him, but it is. Probably.
(Or it's some other evil thing, but either way, Ellie, Devon: trouble.)
Sarah puts a hand on his, the one covering the mouse, and she moves them both up to the 'x' to close the window.
"We'll go."
He kisses her, slow and soft and sad, and it's a thank you and another ending and he can only hope they at least get one more beginning.
&&.
After the train ride, the plane ride and the cab ride, there's barely anything left from the bomb scare, but Chuck's enough of a spy to know that just means somebody did a good job cleaning up.
He's not even sure where to start (and more than a little unnerved by the extra thorough frisking her got from airport security, even if it didn't turn into anything). Sarah's counting down the minutes, the seconds, until somebody finds them.
"As soon as we pass through the first camera, they'll see us," she'd said. "We just have to hope it's the good guys."
The "good" guys is pretty relative at this point, and Chuck's already imagining his future in a bunker and Sarah's in, oh god, a prison for treason, maybe? You don't really get out of that twice, right? But they've made it as far as the hospital front doors without anything happening, even if it's only a matter of time.
Without knowing what he's looking for, Chuck ends up just scanning faces, trying to get the Intersect to hit on something, when he sees one that Chuck, not the Intersect, recognizes.
Ellie.
Sarah sees her at the same time and has a hand out to stop Chuck, but it's too late, Ellie's running across the lobby, a blur in blue scrubs, coming right toward them. "Chuck! Chuck! Sarah!"
He pauses for a second, trying to figure out why she doesn't seem angry or confused or anything and just before she launches herself on him in a hug, he remembers he'd told her he was going away. Back when it was a lie about spy camp (even if he knew they were going to run).
Ellie's going a mile a minute, trying to catch them up on everything and get caught up on them and she's hugging both of them with one hand and trying to call Devon with the other. Chuck's so, so happy to see her that it doesn't even immediately register that they've gotten themselves almost entirely surrounded.
Sarah's noticed though. He's not sure where she got a gun, or if it's just out of habit, but her hand flies to behind her back and Chuck starts trying to get Ellie away before things get, uh, confrontational. Luckily her phone alarm goes off, "Oh, gotta go! Come over for dinner, both of you!"
And she darts off. (He feels sick about how surprised he is that no one tried to stop her. He feels even sicker when he realizes they could just as easily get her on a different floor.)
He watches Ellie go until she rounds a corner and then, at the feeling of Sarah's hand on him again, he pulls himself back to focus. It's flashes like rapid fire, like he's never had before, his face is even starting to hurt -- Ring agent, CIA, Ring agent, CIA, Ring agent, NSA, Ring agent -- Casey?
Well, no one exactly beat anyone here, looks like. Everyone's got a hand on a pocket or a waistband and Casey's not even taking the time to glower at them, everything is that close to breaking.
It breaks.
Chuck has no idea who shot first or what he's supposed to do and then he's just stopped thinking. Fists, gunshots, yelling, blood, it's everywhere and it's in slow motion and it's flying by and then it's over.
He's standing, Casey's standing and one other guy (a "good" guy) is standing, everyone else is on the ground and hospital personnel are trying to swarm, but Casey's started waving his gun around. He's pointing at bodies, barking, "Yes, yes, no, no, yes, NO."
Everything's still blurring, but then, oh, oh, oh my god, Sarah.
"Casey! CASEY. Where is Sarah?"
He feels like his voice is coming out in a whisper, he's had nightmares just like this, when he hears Ellie's voice cut through everything.
"Sarah!"
He follows her voice and Ellie's running toward Sarah, who's slumped against a wall clutching her side. It's so much like Bryce, he throws up. No one notices.
Somehow he gets over to Sarah and Ellie and Sarah's groaning and Ellie's trying to ask him what happened, but all he can say is fix her, fix her, fix her, fix her.
(She does.)
&&.
It's sort of (it is) a huge mess.
Casey won't even talk to them.
Ellie's had to be told the story so many times, Chuck's starting to believe that's the way it actually happened. ("We just got caught up in the middle of something. Sarah picked up a gun off the floor. I don't know why Casey was there.")
Sarah spends two weeks in the hospital, but makes a full recovery.
Chuck doesn't leave the hospital until she does.
He tells her he loves her the day she's released. She lets him carry her out to the car. It's kind of her version of "ditto," he thinks.
When they finally get in for a debriefing, Chuck half-figures it's an ambush. Like that they're walking into their sentencing. He even goes out of his way to say extra long goodbyes to Ellie and Awesome and texts Morgan before they get there. If he's going to spend his life in a basement from now on, it's been a good run. And if he's going to end up dead right now, he's already decided he's going to make sure Sarah doesn't.
(Like in a way that he practiced jumping in front of pretend bullets last night, in his bedroom, onto his bed. It's going to be Chuck, not the Intersect, that protects her, even if it kills him. Which, you know, it might.)
But then only Casey's in the room, which doesn't actually mean anything, but he doesn't have his gun out and Beckman's on the screen and, oh, no way. No death? No bunker?
He's smiling, but no one else is and he thinks maybe he's ahead of himself. Casey shifts on his feet, and, ah, look, there's his gun.
Suddenly though, Beckman's speaking, they're going to use this thing between the two of them. A husband and wife team are heading up a NorCal cell of The Ring, looking to recruit another couple.
Beckman plows on, this isn't playing house. These two are serious, they're going to be expecting Chuck and Sarah to have intimate knowledge of each other and they will be asking. There's no intel yet to indicate why they're looking specifically for a couple, but that's part of what they're looking into.
For now, she says, Chuck and Sarah are released, but officially censured. Their flight will board at 0600 tomorrow.
The screen goes blank.
Chuck can't believe his luck, it's like, really, really ridiculous good luck.
(Except that they didn't actually get away from danger, they just went right back to it, slightly more open about their relationship or feelings -- it's going to have be enough for now.)
Even Sarah looks dumbfounded, right up until Casey finally speaks to them.
"Enjoy your joint burial plot."
It's the way he says it more than anything, it's not actually as mean as it sounds, so Chuck grins at him and scoots out before Casey changes his mind.
They board the flight and meet up with the Ring couple.
That night at dinner, they're asked about their honeymoon, drilled really, and they talk about some no name little town with a campfire and a single phone booth.
(Everyone buys it because it's true.)
&&.