This is a fic to celebrate the birthday of one of my favourite, and many others' favourite, Chuck Fanfic authors. Happy birthday, Zerectica.
It was a cold December night, the kind that you normally get around Christmas. Frost lying on the ground, even in the normally warm climate of Los Angeles. Condensation was already beginning to crawl up the window of Sarah Walker's hotel, and her room was the only one still lit as she looked sadly at the clock, which was slowly ticking its way towards midnight.
Another birthday spent alone and unremembered. How often had that happened in the past years? Bryce had always been lax in remembering it, and her gifts that she received from him were generally obviously bought that day from a petrol station local to whichever hotel in whatever godforsaken land that was their home for however long it took to finish up this particular mission.
Truth be told she was used to it; you don't become a CIA agent for the great family it brings. But still, it would be nice if someone had seen fit to spend today with her. Chuck, despite being naturally being her preferred option, was out of the question. There was no way she could share something that personal with him, although there were times where she questioned the wisdom of all these walls in front of her heart.
You weren't going to leave him anyway, what difference does it make if he knows that, or your real name? Isn't that right, Heather? She berates herself, and it's only then she notices that she has used her real name, even inside her head, for the first time in over ten years. She doesn't know why she's suddenly glad of being able to think using her real name however; she hates the name Heather. It's an ugly and horrible name. Much like that stupid cheerleader and evil "genius" Heather Chandler. She doesn't mind it so much now though, it gives her a reason to believe in the real world again, like so many things have since this assignment began so long ago she can barely remember what it was like before Chuck. It seems that sometimes being the spy plays second fiddle to being the girl who's confused about what to do about the guy she's fallen in love with, despite her best efforts.
She looks sadly at the small mountain of plain Hershey's chocolate she had created, complete with a solitary, drooping candle balanced on the chocolaty peak. Not traditional by any means, but she didn't like cake, and she liked Hershey's chocolate, so this way she solved both problems while still maintaining some semblance of birthday-ness with the candle. The way the candlelight flickered as she softly sang Happy Birthday to me to herself was incredibly fitting. This was her birthday, and it had passed just like any other day. The only thing she had done that was remotely special today was to attempt making Mac and Cheese like her dad used to make for her. Unsurprisingly, it hadn't gone well.
Her life was a lonely one, so it shouldn't have surprised her that nobody celebrated her birthday, but the one guy she had found that could change that just had to go and be a hero. Why couldn't he have just been Chuck, rather than Agent Carmichael? She asked herself for what seemed like the millionth time since he had uploaded the new Intersect.
Of course, he was Chuck. That was part of the problem. She had to go and convince him he was meant for so much more than the Buy More, which he was, but then that ideal ended up destroying the one thing she had come to want more than anything. Why did I have to convince him he was a hero?
A knocking at the door interrupted her annual wallow-in-self-pity session. There was only one person who ever visited her at her hotel room, at least after she had finally gotten a restraining order for that boy who kept bringing her flowers and singing James Blunt songs through her letterbox. From certain people, one in particular, that would have been incredibly romantic for her, but from someone whose voice sometimes broke mid-word? Not so cute.
She made her way over to the door, suddenly mindful of the fact she was only wearing pyjama bottoms and a faded Nerd-Herd T-Shirt, before she remembered the fact that this was Chuck she was going to greet, they'd gone through a skip together and his jaw had still dropped when he saw her afterwards. That didn't stop her from standing in front of the mirror desperately trying to sort out her hair, despite it already being immaculately styled from her day's somewhat less than strenuous activities at the Orange Orange.
After one final attempt at self-grooming she finally opened the door to her knight in nerdy armour, although with his new hairstyle the armour was shining more by the day. He beamed at her, whilst holding up a pizza box triumphantly with one hand, while the other was hidden behind his back. She eyed the non-pizza filled arm suspiciously, whilst eyeing the pizza filled arm hungrily. Both at the same time. It was quite a skill, and one she had developed over many pizza/film nights with her computer-brained "boyfriend".
Chuck on the other hand, after recovering marvellously from his usual jaw-drop in the presence of Sarah, moved his eyes to the chocolate equivalent of Mont Blanc, complete with candle, and he swivelled his eyes slowly back to Sarah before asking the question that was obviously on his lips.
"What's with Mt. Hersheymore?"
She looked back at him with one delicately sculpted eyebrow curled upwards, and the proverbial light bulb above Chuck's head flicked on.
"It's your birthday?!" he exclaimed.
Sarah rolled her eyes at Chuck's complete ineptitude when it came to cover maintenance.
"Would you mind not sounding so surprised? You're supposed to be my boyfriend, ergo you should know my birthday," she reminded him.
Chuck at least had the grace to look slightly abashed before triumphantly revealing the gift he had been concealing behind his back. Sarah nearly screamed in shock at what he was holding. She'd looked everywhere for it with no success, yet here Chuck was, holding a pristine copy of season 3 of I Dream of Jeannie. She tried to contain the shout of delight but it was too strong to resist.
"Oh my God! How did you find that?! I've been looking everywhere for it!"
Chuck was taken aback by this sudden outburst of emotion from the normally stoic CIA agent, and actually quite glad that even Sarah seemed to have a weakness. It would be just unnatural otherwise. Meanwhile, Sarah's joy filled explosion was still going strong, until she actually thought about what Chuck was holding.
"Wait...how did you know I love I Dream of Jeannie? Nobody knows that," she asked with equal measures of confusion and suspicion.
"Uh...lucky guess?"
Sarah wasn't buying that one for a moment.
"Yeah, right. Now how did you really find out?"
"Well, first off you have a Barbara Eden background on your phone. Then there's the fact you kept whistling the theme tune over and over last Tuesday. But mostly I got it from you having seasons 1, 2, 4 and 5 in pride of place right in the middle of your DVD case. And that's without mentioning all of the Facebook stuff."
"What Facebook stu...oohhh" said Sarah. She had spent a large amount of time a few nights ago on Facebook joining every I Dream of Jeannie related group she could find.
"Yeah, I saw that. Now...can I come in please; this hallway is colder than you might think," said Chuck, shivering theatrically to emphasise the point.
Sarah didn't seem to be listening, as she was eyeing the DVD with an expression of wonder. If Chuck didn't know any better he'd swear he could almost see the slight sheen of tears in her eyes as a smile took over her face.
"Er...Sarah?" he said, waving his hand in front of her face in an effort to bring her back to the present.
"Huh, what?" Sarah said, broken out of her momentary trance, before adding, "Jeannie please."
"Well, I guess I know what makes Sarah Walker tick now," said Chuck more to himself than anyone else, handing over the DVD and making his way over the threshold as Sarah moved to set up her DVD player, oblivious to almost everything except the back of the DVD box.
"Right...I'll just...yeah," said Chuck, not quite knowing what to do, so he ended up standing by Sarah's bed, pizza in hand while he waited for Sarah to finish setting up the first disc. Sarah had been busy while Chuck was away at his spy training, especially after her decision to make this assignment somewhat long term. Therefore she had finally invested in transporting all of her DVDs from her Washington apartment, and also bought a full entertainment system using the money she had saved up in wages from her long, and fully expensed, assignments abroad. It was a set up even a technological freak like Chuck would envy.
Eventually the title screen of the first disc came on, and Sarah, almost bouncing with anticipation, came back over to the bed and flopped down upon it, before she realised she had left the Hershey pile over on the dresser. Letting out a small moan of frustration she moved to get up and retrieve said chocolate. Chuck spotted his opportunity to remind her of his presence quickly.
"Don't move, I'll get it, you just continue your, well, let's call it what it is, freak-out," he said, setting the pizza down on what would be "his" side of the bed and moving to get the pile of chocolate, suddenly thankful that Sarah had had the foresight to put the chocolate on a tray. He carried it over and placed it in front of Sarah with a mock bow.
"Your chocolate, milady," he added with a slight jokey tone.
"Why thank you, kind sir," said Sarah, playing along, before she said in an altogether more serious tone, "Now sit down so we can watch Jeannie."
Chuck wasn't going to argue with Sarah when she used that tone; it had caused him more trouble than it was worth over these past couple of years. Sarah always won, and if Chuck ever felt like he had a victory, well, Sarah didn't let him feel like he had won the argument. It really wasn't worth the hassle arguing with her.
As the signature theme tune came on, signalling the start of the first episode, which also happened to be one of Sarah's favourites, as she always thought the monkey Tony and Roger were training at the start was kind of cute, she suddenly got very quiet and attentive. Chuck turned out the light before he made his way to sit on the bed with her, shuffling the pizza out of the way because he knew how often Sarah tended to gravitate towards him whilst watching something on the TV.
Sure enough, before the first episode was finished Sarah had her head rested on Chuck's shoulder as he wrapped his arm around her, while they both worked through the mountain of chocolate that substituted for birthday cake. The pizza lay forgotten at the foot of the bed, but neither Chuck nor Sarah were in the mood for pizza at that point. Sarah's attention barely wavered from the show as she was kept rapt throughout all of the episodes of the first disc.
Chuck was barely paying attention to the show, but that generally ended up happening whenever Sarah was in close proximity to him. She seemed to have a way of completely distracting him and leaving him unable to focus on anything but her, not that Chuck was complaining. He was also incredibly grateful to the automatic disc-changer Sarah had had installed for exactly the purpose of not having to get up during a Jeanniethon, as she called her marathon sessions involving the 2000 year-old genie and her various adventures.
Normally Sarah found herself falling asleep around halfway through most of the films she and Chuck watched on their self prescribed "cover-maintenance nights", so safe did she feel with her head rested on his shoulder and his arms around her, but it would take more than Chuck's soporific effects to draw her attention away from Jeannie. She hadn't yet failed to make it through a season in one sitting, even after a difficult mission, although there had been a close call after a particularly gruelling mission in Prague, although Casey's angry, yet muffled, shouts from the hotel room next door played an admirable part in keeping her heavy eyes open.
Nevertheless, there was something about how touched she was by Chuck's gift that she ended up drifting slowly towards sleep a lot earlier than usual. She was annoyed that she felt her eyes begin to droop somewhere around the episode where Jeannie made Hajii take away her powers for a week. She liked that episode. There was no fighting the onslaught of sleep however, and she eventually succumbed, letting her head fall comfortably onto Chuck's shoulder as he smiled softly at her sleeping form, brushing back some of her hair.
Sarah didn't know this, but he had flashed on her complete personnel file just after he had managed to fully assimilate the new Intersect knowledge after his little, as he called it, "Neo-lite experience". This of course meant that he knew where she was born, who her parents were, that she had a brother and a sister who were now living in Switzerland with her mother, and naturally, he knew her real name. He leant down to whisper softly into her ear as she slept.
"Happy birthday, Heather."