[fic] Let's Go to the Mall!
Title: Let’s Go to the Mall!
Fandom: Chuck
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Violence, some swearing
Pairings: Chuck Bartowski/Sarah Walker
Characters: Chuck Bartowski, Sarah Walker, Hank
Word Count: 2662
Summary: It’s supposed to be a normal day at the mall. Normal for them is not normal for everybody, though.
Author’s Notes: Putting this here for archival purposes!
When Chuck spotted the Baskin Robbins sign and his eyes lit up, Sarah’s eyebrows rose. “You just ate two burgers, fries, and you finished off my fries, too,” she said. “You cannot be hungry already. It’s scientifically impossible. You are not fifteen and growing.”
“But I do get dragged out of bed every morning to go on a run by my awesome wife and that speeds my metabolism up,” Chuck said, putting on a wheedling grin. “Just one scoop?”
“Somehow you’ll make it two scoops and sprinkles,” Sarah pointed out, but she dutifully followed him into the ice cream shop. Besides, triple fudge ripple sounded really good, and Chuck would probably let her cadge some of his ice cream, too. She was hungrier than usual these days, which she chalked up to keeping up with Chuck and his incredibly long legs on those runs.
She couldn’t be sure if the mall’s empty state was normal or not for a Thursday afternoon, given that they really didn’t spend much time at the mall. The Buy More and the Orange Orange were in the same parking lot as the mall, so occasionally Chuck had gone over to fetch Sbarro for lunch (out of solidarity for them creating pizzas based on Morgan’s failures, no doubt), but Sarah preferred to do her shopping either online or away from where she spent a lot of time, as an old spy habit. She didn’t like people knowing too much about her. But when she and Chuck didn’t have anything to do at Carmichael Industries on a Thursday, he’d suggested hitting up the mall (mostly because he wanted to try a video game out at GameStop, she’d learned), and it had sounded pleasant to her, so here they were, about to get ice cream.
Outside the shop, there was an adoption stand set up, with sad-eyed dogs and cats in their cages while the volunteers tried to lure people closer. Teenagers, who were likely truants anyway, loitered about, drifting from store to store with their noses practically glued to their phone screens. There were a couple of middle-aged men and women doing the mall circuit and walking with purpose, and a woman with two screaming toddlers in a stroller looked harried as she wandered past. Sarah gave her a sympathetic look because she looked like she could use one, and was ignored.
“Isn’t this a great mini-vacation?” Chuck asked as they pondered the ice cream flavors behind the glass in the store. He looked across at the bored clerk. “Ice cream always makes things better, yeah?”
“Sure,” the kid said.
Chuck’s face lit up. Must have spotted something on the kid’s nametag lanyard, Sarah thought, as that definitely wasn’t Flash Face. “Oh, hey, you play Kingdom of Athinei, too?”
And that, of course, launched off a long and complicated discussion about guilds and armor classes and things Sarah would rather prefer not to understand. By the time she had her cone with its single scoop of triple fudge ripple, Chuck had not only made a friend, but had seemingly joined a guild and maybe even passed on the sovereignty of some kind of nation-Sarah really wasn’t paying attention-to the next heir, maybe?
She paid for the ice cream and stood back to let Chuck and the clerk talk since it would probably be the most animated the kid got all day. One of the side-effects of Chuck’s innate Chuckness was that he tended to draw people around him, rather like moths to a flame. It was always a little startling to behold in its full glory, as she’d always been trained to avoid being the center of attention-unless she wanted to be-but with Chuck, it came naturally, like breathing or confusing her with video game babble. So she stood by the doorway to the Baskin Robbins and watched the mall life go by. They were right across from one of those scam loan joints, the ones that charged you an exorbitant interest rate. Sarah wondered why people continually fell for that. It really wasn’t all that much different from what her father did to people, only these people did it legally.
She was so absorbed in thinking about her father that she almost didn’t notice the three that stepped inside the loan store. Two men, one women. They all wore dark clothing, long sleeves and pants, which was what really drew her attention. And only then did she notice the military posture, the purposeful way of moving.
They weren’t there to shop for loans.
“Chuck,” she managed to say in a sharp enough voice to burst through the video game bubble. “I think there’s trouble at the-”
And of course, all hell broke loose.
The sound of gunshots would always be surprising, even if she’d heard them a thousand times before. There was always something to the simple cacophony of noise, a booming, encompassing sound that hadn’t existed a split-second before. Most people froze, some people panicked, but Chuck and Sarah immediately reacted. Sarah ducked forward; Chuck leaped clear over the counter and yanked the manager and the ice cream clerk he’d befriended to the floor. “Stay down!” Sarah heard him shout between the bouts of gunfire.
As for her, she focused on the barriers between her and the loan store. There was a metal-ringed trash can that could provide ample cover, as it looked like maintenance hadn’t taken out the trash yet. A bench could work in a pinch. But more distressingly, the pet adoption stand was right next to the loan store. She could see the animals in their cages, screeching or barking. The humans were on the ground, terrified, with their hands over their head.
Chuck jumped over the counter again and rolled to cover beside Sarah. “How many civilians?”
“Seven,” Sarah said. “Four at the adoption place, two here, that…uh, I think that’s a kid.” It was hard to tell behind the amount of facial piercings, but the kid was cowering behind the fountain.
Chuck looked grim. “Attack or triage?”
“There are three of them,” Sarah said, and described the trio she’d seen enter the loan store. “I don’t know how many were in the store.”
“Outnumbered, you think?”
“Yes.”
Chuck snatched his tranq gun out of his waistband and held it next to his face, pointed toward the ceiling. He claimed it was a James Bond thing, which explained why Bryce had always done the same thing. “Attack it is. I’ll go low?”
“See you on the other side. Cover me.”
“Always, hon.”
Like one well-oiled, sinuous machine, they moved, Chuck rolling out from behind the Baskin Robbins door to lay down cover fire for Sarah as she took two running steps, used the trash can as a springboard, and cleared the last ten feet to the loan collection center in a single bound. A fancy bit of parkour meant she went right over the attackers’ gunshots, running up the side of the wall and into the store. She landed on one of the desks in the store and knocked out one of the attackers with a headshot, leaving two.
It was cramped inside the store, just a couple of desks and faded posters on the wall. Yellow tile on the floors, blue paint on the walls. Sarah took it all in-and then the woman mercenary threw a lamp at Sarah. Sarah ducked, and her foot caught on a piece of paper on the desk, making her slide dangerously toward the edge. She course-corrected, rolling to the floor, but the woman wasn’t giving up.
Before Sarah knew it, the woman had stepped into her space and had thrown a punch. It glanced off of Sarah’s neck, just under her ear. The impact made her drop her gun. Sarah grunted, taking the hit, and spun. By some miracle, she got a grip in the woman’s tac vest, enough to shove her away. A quick look told her that Chuck had distracted the third mercenary and was using the Intersect to take him down with hand to hand.
He seemed to be holding his own, so Sarah advanced on her attacker, intending to incapacitate her. The woman was faster than Sarah expected, though. She struck out; Sarah dodged and struck back, and Sarah had to give her full concentration to avoiding body blows. She got in a good knee to the chest, but she’d also be sporting a shiner the next day. Finally, she landed a hard jab to the ribcage and was about to deliver her final haymaker when-
“Mrow?”
The noise was so foreign to her world that Sarah jolted. And before she knew it, her opponent kicked her solidly in the chest. Sarah went backward into the wall and through the wall. Pain flared out from her shoulders and her middle and her chest. She landed roughly, bouncing a couple of times, and looked up, thoroughly discombobulated, to find herself between clothing racks.
And then she blinked and the mercenary was standing over her with a gun, smirking.
Oh, dammit.
She’d seen her life flash before her eyes too many times to count, so she didn’t bother when the mercenary pointed the gun at her. Instead, she reached for the knife on her thigh holster-she might have lost her gun, but take away Sarah Walker’s knives, you’d better run for your life-and prayed she’d be faster, or that Chuck would somehow intervene.
It wasn’t Chuck that came to her rescue.
There was a noise like a record scratch or a wild animal and Sarah was knocked back to the floor by a heavy weight on her aching chest. She got the impression of gray and white fur and a smell like antiseptic before the thing on her chest let out a mighty hiss at Sarah’s attacker…and Sarah realized that a housecat had just come to her assistance.
The mercenary seemed to echo Sarah’s sentiments. “Seriously?” the woman asked in a thick eastern European accent.
“I got nothing,” Sarah said, and Chuck finally broke free of his own fight long enough to club her attacker with a lamp. The woman collapsed to the ground like a sack of potatoes.
The cat on Sarah’s chest immediately stood and circled around, making Sarah gasp because she’d just been thrown through a wall. It had a gray face with a white muzzle, a white underbelly, and white paws. It studied her; Sarah blinked back.
And abruptly, it curled up on her chest and made a noise that sounded like a miniature motorcycle engine.
“What?” was all Sarah could say to that.
Chuck, on the other hand, lit up. “Look at that, you’ve made a friend.”
“What?” Sarah said again.
“Need a hand?” Chuck reached down.
“I’m a little afraid to-”
Before Sarah could finish her sentence, though, the cat sprang to life, all four legs stretching to their longest and gray fur rising all up its back. It looked at Chuck and hissed, making the nerd jump back in surprise.
“Sounds like your new cat has good taste,” Chuck said.
“My new cat?”
“Aw, c’mon, look at that face. And he did just save your life.”
“He’s the one that caused me to go through a wall.” Warily, Sarah reached for the cat. She wasn’t an animal person. Cats tended to scratch and claw things and were kind of bastions of evil, if you asked Casey, and she’d never formed much of an opinion on them herself. She had a vision of the cat scratching the hell out of her hand, but it merely blinked at her fingers and then pushed its head against them. “Seriously?” Sarah asked.
“Hank! Hank, where are-” A harried woman in a pet adoption T-shirt ran into the store, looking about frantically. She skidded to a stop. “Oh, thank god, there you are, Hank.”
“The cat’s name is Hank?” Chuck asked.
The woman nodded and knelt by Sarah. “Are you okay, Miss? I’ve never seen Hank take to anybody so fast. And-oh, my god, why is there a hole in the wall?”
“Don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt as bad as it looks,” Sarah said, and since the woman seemed to know the cat, she deemed it safe to try and sit up. Hank immediately switched positions to nuzzle under Sarah’s chin, which might have felt better had Sarah not just been in a hand to hand fight. “Is everybody out there okay?” she asked the woman.
“Yes, nobody was hit that we can tell-are you two cops?”
“Yes,” Sarah said before Chuck could answer and confuse the woman more. He was still pretty terrible at lying. Gingerly, she hooked a hand under Hank’s belly-were all cats this pliant? This was ridiculous-and picked him up, holding him out toward the woman. “Here, I think this is yours.”
“Actually, he’s not anybody’s. Today was kind of his last chance. He’s…cantankerous. Actually, do you think you’d mind carrying him back to his cage? He scratches, but he seems like he likes you.” The woman frowned.
When Sarah was on her feet, Hank curled around her arm and put his head on her shoulder. “What do you mean, his last chance?” Chuck asked.
“Well, as much as we’d like to be, we’re not a no-kill shelter, and Hank hasn’t taken to anybody…” The woman trailed off, and there was meaning in her pause.
“Oh,” Chuck said.
Sarah looked from the volunteer to her husband and finally got it. “Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head. Hank seemed to think this was a great game and batted gently at her chin. “No, no, no, I’ve never wanted a cat.”
“But Sarah, he likes you!”
“He tried to scratch the crap out of your hand like a minute ago, Chuck. Do you want to live with something that hates you?”
“I’ll win him over,” Chuck said, shrugging. And the worst part was, Sarah knew, that it was entirely true. Chuck’s chuckness powers probably worked on animals probably just as well as they did on humans.
“You’re allergic,” she pointed out.
“They’ve got pills. Totally worth it after he saved your life.”
As if he could understand human language, Hank turned a mournful look on Sarah. The volunteer and Chuck did, too, so not only was she banged up from her fight, now her conscience was being barraged.
Hank put his paw against her lips. It was…incredibly adorable.
“Oh, fine,” Sarah said, and the volunteer actually fist-pumped.
There was apparently paperwork to fill out. Even in the chaos of the police showing up to take down the mercenaries, Chuck managed to fill out most of it. Their statements were taken, the CIA badges enough to get Beckman to handle all of the local cops. Sarah stood back and played with her new cat, who hissed at anybody else that came close.
“Can you blame him?” was all Chuck said. He turned to the volunteer, who’d finally introduced herself as Karen. “Okay, we’ll be by the shelter to pick him up right after the hospital.”
“We don’t have to go to the hospital,” Sarah said.
“You went through a wall.”
Sarah sighed at him. It actually hurt to put Hank into the cage, especially since he gave her a betrayed look as she walked away. “Oh, look at that,” Chuck said, putting an arm around her. “You’re getting attached already. Though we could maybe change his name.”
“I like the name Hank,” Sarah said. “It suits him.”
“Okay, you’re now officially not allowed to name our future children.”
“Please, like that’s something we’re going to have to worry anytime soon,” Sarah said.
If she’d realized how fast she would have to eat those words, she reflected after she and Chuck had talked to two doctors and let the shock settle somewhat, she probably wouldn’t have said that. As it turned out, Hank wasn’t the only new addition to the family that year. Though he was probably the crankiest.
Fandom: Chuck
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Violence, some swearing
Pairings: Chuck Bartowski/Sarah Walker
Characters: Chuck Bartowski, Sarah Walker, Hank
Word Count: 2662
Summary: It’s supposed to be a normal day at the mall. Normal for them is not normal for everybody, though.
Author’s Notes: Putting this here for archival purposes!
When Chuck spotted the Baskin Robbins sign and his eyes lit up, Sarah’s eyebrows rose. “You just ate two burgers, fries, and you finished off my fries, too,” she said. “You cannot be hungry already. It’s scientifically impossible. You are not fifteen and growing.”
“But I do get dragged out of bed every morning to go on a run by my awesome wife and that speeds my metabolism up,” Chuck said, putting on a wheedling grin. “Just one scoop?”
“Somehow you’ll make it two scoops and sprinkles,” Sarah pointed out, but she dutifully followed him into the ice cream shop. Besides, triple fudge ripple sounded really good, and Chuck would probably let her cadge some of his ice cream, too. She was hungrier than usual these days, which she chalked up to keeping up with Chuck and his incredibly long legs on those runs.
She couldn’t be sure if the mall’s empty state was normal or not for a Thursday afternoon, given that they really didn’t spend much time at the mall. The Buy More and the Orange Orange were in the same parking lot as the mall, so occasionally Chuck had gone over to fetch Sbarro for lunch (out of solidarity for them creating pizzas based on Morgan’s failures, no doubt), but Sarah preferred to do her shopping either online or away from where she spent a lot of time, as an old spy habit. She didn’t like people knowing too much about her. But when she and Chuck didn’t have anything to do at Carmichael Industries on a Thursday, he’d suggested hitting up the mall (mostly because he wanted to try a video game out at GameStop, she’d learned), and it had sounded pleasant to her, so here they were, about to get ice cream.
Outside the shop, there was an adoption stand set up, with sad-eyed dogs and cats in their cages while the volunteers tried to lure people closer. Teenagers, who were likely truants anyway, loitered about, drifting from store to store with their noses practically glued to their phone screens. There were a couple of middle-aged men and women doing the mall circuit and walking with purpose, and a woman with two screaming toddlers in a stroller looked harried as she wandered past. Sarah gave her a sympathetic look because she looked like she could use one, and was ignored.
“Isn’t this a great mini-vacation?” Chuck asked as they pondered the ice cream flavors behind the glass in the store. He looked across at the bored clerk. “Ice cream always makes things better, yeah?”
“Sure,” the kid said.
Chuck’s face lit up. Must have spotted something on the kid’s nametag lanyard, Sarah thought, as that definitely wasn’t Flash Face. “Oh, hey, you play Kingdom of Athinei, too?”
And that, of course, launched off a long and complicated discussion about guilds and armor classes and things Sarah would rather prefer not to understand. By the time she had her cone with its single scoop of triple fudge ripple, Chuck had not only made a friend, but had seemingly joined a guild and maybe even passed on the sovereignty of some kind of nation-Sarah really wasn’t paying attention-to the next heir, maybe?
She paid for the ice cream and stood back to let Chuck and the clerk talk since it would probably be the most animated the kid got all day. One of the side-effects of Chuck’s innate Chuckness was that he tended to draw people around him, rather like moths to a flame. It was always a little startling to behold in its full glory, as she’d always been trained to avoid being the center of attention-unless she wanted to be-but with Chuck, it came naturally, like breathing or confusing her with video game babble. So she stood by the doorway to the Baskin Robbins and watched the mall life go by. They were right across from one of those scam loan joints, the ones that charged you an exorbitant interest rate. Sarah wondered why people continually fell for that. It really wasn’t all that much different from what her father did to people, only these people did it legally.
She was so absorbed in thinking about her father that she almost didn’t notice the three that stepped inside the loan store. Two men, one women. They all wore dark clothing, long sleeves and pants, which was what really drew her attention. And only then did she notice the military posture, the purposeful way of moving.
They weren’t there to shop for loans.
“Chuck,” she managed to say in a sharp enough voice to burst through the video game bubble. “I think there’s trouble at the-”
And of course, all hell broke loose.
The sound of gunshots would always be surprising, even if she’d heard them a thousand times before. There was always something to the simple cacophony of noise, a booming, encompassing sound that hadn’t existed a split-second before. Most people froze, some people panicked, but Chuck and Sarah immediately reacted. Sarah ducked forward; Chuck leaped clear over the counter and yanked the manager and the ice cream clerk he’d befriended to the floor. “Stay down!” Sarah heard him shout between the bouts of gunfire.
As for her, she focused on the barriers between her and the loan store. There was a metal-ringed trash can that could provide ample cover, as it looked like maintenance hadn’t taken out the trash yet. A bench could work in a pinch. But more distressingly, the pet adoption stand was right next to the loan store. She could see the animals in their cages, screeching or barking. The humans were on the ground, terrified, with their hands over their head.
Chuck jumped over the counter again and rolled to cover beside Sarah. “How many civilians?”
“Seven,” Sarah said. “Four at the adoption place, two here, that…uh, I think that’s a kid.” It was hard to tell behind the amount of facial piercings, but the kid was cowering behind the fountain.
Chuck looked grim. “Attack or triage?”
“There are three of them,” Sarah said, and described the trio she’d seen enter the loan store. “I don’t know how many were in the store.”
“Outnumbered, you think?”
“Yes.”
Chuck snatched his tranq gun out of his waistband and held it next to his face, pointed toward the ceiling. He claimed it was a James Bond thing, which explained why Bryce had always done the same thing. “Attack it is. I’ll go low?”
“See you on the other side. Cover me.”
“Always, hon.”
Like one well-oiled, sinuous machine, they moved, Chuck rolling out from behind the Baskin Robbins door to lay down cover fire for Sarah as she took two running steps, used the trash can as a springboard, and cleared the last ten feet to the loan collection center in a single bound. A fancy bit of parkour meant she went right over the attackers’ gunshots, running up the side of the wall and into the store. She landed on one of the desks in the store and knocked out one of the attackers with a headshot, leaving two.
It was cramped inside the store, just a couple of desks and faded posters on the wall. Yellow tile on the floors, blue paint on the walls. Sarah took it all in-and then the woman mercenary threw a lamp at Sarah. Sarah ducked, and her foot caught on a piece of paper on the desk, making her slide dangerously toward the edge. She course-corrected, rolling to the floor, but the woman wasn’t giving up.
Before Sarah knew it, the woman had stepped into her space and had thrown a punch. It glanced off of Sarah’s neck, just under her ear. The impact made her drop her gun. Sarah grunted, taking the hit, and spun. By some miracle, she got a grip in the woman’s tac vest, enough to shove her away. A quick look told her that Chuck had distracted the third mercenary and was using the Intersect to take him down with hand to hand.
He seemed to be holding his own, so Sarah advanced on her attacker, intending to incapacitate her. The woman was faster than Sarah expected, though. She struck out; Sarah dodged and struck back, and Sarah had to give her full concentration to avoiding body blows. She got in a good knee to the chest, but she’d also be sporting a shiner the next day. Finally, she landed a hard jab to the ribcage and was about to deliver her final haymaker when-
“Mrow?”
The noise was so foreign to her world that Sarah jolted. And before she knew it, her opponent kicked her solidly in the chest. Sarah went backward into the wall and through the wall. Pain flared out from her shoulders and her middle and her chest. She landed roughly, bouncing a couple of times, and looked up, thoroughly discombobulated, to find herself between clothing racks.
And then she blinked and the mercenary was standing over her with a gun, smirking.
Oh, dammit.
She’d seen her life flash before her eyes too many times to count, so she didn’t bother when the mercenary pointed the gun at her. Instead, she reached for the knife on her thigh holster-she might have lost her gun, but take away Sarah Walker’s knives, you’d better run for your life-and prayed she’d be faster, or that Chuck would somehow intervene.
It wasn’t Chuck that came to her rescue.
There was a noise like a record scratch or a wild animal and Sarah was knocked back to the floor by a heavy weight on her aching chest. She got the impression of gray and white fur and a smell like antiseptic before the thing on her chest let out a mighty hiss at Sarah’s attacker…and Sarah realized that a housecat had just come to her assistance.
The mercenary seemed to echo Sarah’s sentiments. “Seriously?” the woman asked in a thick eastern European accent.
“I got nothing,” Sarah said, and Chuck finally broke free of his own fight long enough to club her attacker with a lamp. The woman collapsed to the ground like a sack of potatoes.
The cat on Sarah’s chest immediately stood and circled around, making Sarah gasp because she’d just been thrown through a wall. It had a gray face with a white muzzle, a white underbelly, and white paws. It studied her; Sarah blinked back.
And abruptly, it curled up on her chest and made a noise that sounded like a miniature motorcycle engine.
“What?” was all Sarah could say to that.
Chuck, on the other hand, lit up. “Look at that, you’ve made a friend.”
“What?” Sarah said again.
“Need a hand?” Chuck reached down.
“I’m a little afraid to-”
Before Sarah could finish her sentence, though, the cat sprang to life, all four legs stretching to their longest and gray fur rising all up its back. It looked at Chuck and hissed, making the nerd jump back in surprise.
“Sounds like your new cat has good taste,” Chuck said.
“My new cat?”
“Aw, c’mon, look at that face. And he did just save your life.”
“He’s the one that caused me to go through a wall.” Warily, Sarah reached for the cat. She wasn’t an animal person. Cats tended to scratch and claw things and were kind of bastions of evil, if you asked Casey, and she’d never formed much of an opinion on them herself. She had a vision of the cat scratching the hell out of her hand, but it merely blinked at her fingers and then pushed its head against them. “Seriously?” Sarah asked.
“Hank! Hank, where are-” A harried woman in a pet adoption T-shirt ran into the store, looking about frantically. She skidded to a stop. “Oh, thank god, there you are, Hank.”
“The cat’s name is Hank?” Chuck asked.
The woman nodded and knelt by Sarah. “Are you okay, Miss? I’ve never seen Hank take to anybody so fast. And-oh, my god, why is there a hole in the wall?”
“Don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt as bad as it looks,” Sarah said, and since the woman seemed to know the cat, she deemed it safe to try and sit up. Hank immediately switched positions to nuzzle under Sarah’s chin, which might have felt better had Sarah not just been in a hand to hand fight. “Is everybody out there okay?” she asked the woman.
“Yes, nobody was hit that we can tell-are you two cops?”
“Yes,” Sarah said before Chuck could answer and confuse the woman more. He was still pretty terrible at lying. Gingerly, she hooked a hand under Hank’s belly-were all cats this pliant? This was ridiculous-and picked him up, holding him out toward the woman. “Here, I think this is yours.”
“Actually, he’s not anybody’s. Today was kind of his last chance. He’s…cantankerous. Actually, do you think you’d mind carrying him back to his cage? He scratches, but he seems like he likes you.” The woman frowned.
When Sarah was on her feet, Hank curled around her arm and put his head on her shoulder. “What do you mean, his last chance?” Chuck asked.
“Well, as much as we’d like to be, we’re not a no-kill shelter, and Hank hasn’t taken to anybody…” The woman trailed off, and there was meaning in her pause.
“Oh,” Chuck said.
Sarah looked from the volunteer to her husband and finally got it. “Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head. Hank seemed to think this was a great game and batted gently at her chin. “No, no, no, I’ve never wanted a cat.”
“But Sarah, he likes you!”
“He tried to scratch the crap out of your hand like a minute ago, Chuck. Do you want to live with something that hates you?”
“I’ll win him over,” Chuck said, shrugging. And the worst part was, Sarah knew, that it was entirely true. Chuck’s chuckness powers probably worked on animals probably just as well as they did on humans.
“You’re allergic,” she pointed out.
“They’ve got pills. Totally worth it after he saved your life.”
As if he could understand human language, Hank turned a mournful look on Sarah. The volunteer and Chuck did, too, so not only was she banged up from her fight, now her conscience was being barraged.
Hank put his paw against her lips. It was…incredibly adorable.
“Oh, fine,” Sarah said, and the volunteer actually fist-pumped.
There was apparently paperwork to fill out. Even in the chaos of the police showing up to take down the mercenaries, Chuck managed to fill out most of it. Their statements were taken, the CIA badges enough to get Beckman to handle all of the local cops. Sarah stood back and played with her new cat, who hissed at anybody else that came close.
“Can you blame him?” was all Chuck said. He turned to the volunteer, who’d finally introduced herself as Karen. “Okay, we’ll be by the shelter to pick him up right after the hospital.”
“We don’t have to go to the hospital,” Sarah said.
“You went through a wall.”
Sarah sighed at him. It actually hurt to put Hank into the cage, especially since he gave her a betrayed look as she walked away. “Oh, look at that,” Chuck said, putting an arm around her. “You’re getting attached already. Though we could maybe change his name.”
“I like the name Hank,” Sarah said. “It suits him.”
“Okay, you’re now officially not allowed to name our future children.”
“Please, like that’s something we’re going to have to worry anytime soon,” Sarah said.
If she’d realized how fast she would have to eat those words, she reflected after she and Chuck had talked to two doctors and let the shock settle somewhat, she probably wouldn’t have said that. As it turned out, Hank wasn’t the only new addition to the family that year. Though he was probably the crankiest.