A/N: Another missing scene fic, this time between Chuck's awkward non-proposal at the end of "Versus the Cubic Z" and the beginning of "Versus the Coup d'Etat". It's in Sarah's POV and it's canon. I always wondered exactly what had gone on in Sarah's head during all of that and how she ended up looking so nonplussed in the van scene when he brought it up. It looked to me like Chuck had been stressing over it and she had completely forgotten about it. But we all know Sarah. Chuck's neuroses are there for the world to see, and Sarah's are deep deep deep down inside. I thought I'd pull those neuroses up for everyone to see.

I seriously had a lot of fun writing this one today. As was the last one, this is being posted without a beta. All mistakes and incongruencies with the show are my fault and my lack of attention to detail.

Enjoy everyone!

Disclaimer: I don't own Chuck, it's characters, or Sarah Walker's Orange Orange uniform. But I really freaking want all of these things. So don't sue me for writing about them, please?

Sarah's heart was still in her throat as she emptied a few rounds from her beloved Smith and Wesson into the gut of an innocent two-dimensional, faceless enemy. She lowered the gun and let out the breath she hadn't known she'd been holding, pressing the button that slid the target across the shooting range to hang a few feet away from her. She took it down from the clips and peered at the bullet holes. More bulls-eyes than not.

But the usual smirk at her success was missing from her beautiful features as she crumpled the target and tossed it behind her, pulling her protective glasses from her eyes and tugging the earplugs out to drop on the desk against the wall.

What the hell was that? Scuffing her fist against the nearest wall with a grumpy frown, she tucked her gun into the back of her pants and checked her watch. Ten minutes until they debriefed with Beckman.

What the hell?

Sarah Walker had found herself nearly dizzy with relief when she'd finally told Chuck the truth and he hadn't been upset by her revelation. She couldn't put into words how incredibly happy she'd been when he agreed to take things slow. She knew Chuck. She knew how warm he was, how easily he connected with people, and how dependent he was on companionship and the relationships he had with his family and friends…and her. But she was different. So very different.

Leaning her overheated forehead against the metal of the door that blocked off the shooting range from the rest of Castle, she thought of how much she'd changed since a few years ago. If someone had told her five years ago that there was a loving, fulfilling, real relationship with someone in her future, Sarah would have laughed. Or punched them.

Although it was true that even before meeting Chuck she'd been starting to feel disillusioned with the spy life and the moral ambiguity a large chuck of her life depended on, she'd never allowed herself to believe such a thing was possible for her. Bryce had been the closest thing to it, and although what they'd had was special to her at the time…Chuck…

A soft smile settled on her features and she straightened, pressing her thumb against the security pad and walking through the opening door. Everything about what she had with Chuck was special to her, from the quiet moments at night before they fell asleep when his fingers would rub small circles on her arms as he held her, to that particular smile of his that belonged only to her…the easiness with which they tended to make-up during small disagreements or tiffs, or the indescribable skip in her heartbeat whenever he found a way to work some science fiction, fantasy or video game reference into a conversation that had nothing to do with any of those things (even during briefings with Beckman, but the red-headed general had quickly learned to ignore the quirk completely).

Chuck wasn't just her romantic partner, though. He was her professional partner. She'd come to appreciate his intelligence and quick-thinking during missions, and even though he refused to use anything but a tranq, Chuck Bartowski (or perhaps she should say Charles Carmichael) always had her back. There were times during ops when she was worried he might falter, let his emotions take over and make a mistake. But then he'd come through like a true spy. In the back of the van after the mission, she'd feel guilty and ashamed for doubting him. They'd meet eyes and Chuck's spy exterior would fall away, leaving only a handsome nerd smiling warmly at the woman he loved, looking a little goofy (and sexy, she had to admit) in his all black op-gear.

It made her grin widely to think about the spark of pride in his features whenever a mission was successful. He needed those moments in which he impressed himself, because Sarah was constantly impressed with him, more and more as each day passed.

Today included. In spite of the awkwardness that followed.

She held back before she walked into the main room of Castle, seeing that Casey was still sitting at the table. "Casey," she said, continuing inside. "Go home already."

"Nah. Like I told you, I can't stand the silence. Beckman is debriefing us in a few minutes anyways."

She sighed, amused, then perched on the table a few feet away from him. "Yeah, me and Chuck. You're already on vacation."

He grunted. "Vacation. Heh. More like hell."

The telltale sound of a Castle door compressing and sliding open sent a pang of nervousness through Sarah and she looked up to see Chuck coming in, his hands in his pockets. His eyebrows were tilted upwards in the way that meant he'd been thinking a lot in the past hour since the ring incident. She held in a tiny snort. The ring incident. The Ring…incident. Then she rolled her eyes at herself. Spending way too much time around Chuck and Morgan.

Casey was right, she was becoming a nerd.

What was more, Chuck was still in his Nerd Herd attire, which meant he hadn't actually exercised. That meant he'd probably gone for a long walk and over-thought every last moment of their conversation about taking things slow and the awkward non-proposal afterwards.

"Hey," Chuck greeted, his voice a bit too bright and his grin a bit too wide.

"Hey," Sarah replied, darting her eyes to her boots.

"Casey, why are you still here? Shouldn't you be on vacation?"

"Shut up, Bartowski. I'm here for the debriefing."

"But you don't have to be. We can fill you in later. You should get some—"

"Look, I was shot in the leg, not diagnosed with cancer. I'm gonna be sitting in this chair whether I'm here being debriefed or staring at the four walls of my living room," he grumbled. Sarah shrugged at Chuck. The ogre did have a point.

Oh God. I just thought of Casey as an ogre.

Before Chuck, fantastical creatures weren't a part of her vocabulary, even in her mind.

"We should get in there, huh?" Sarah hurried as she and Chuck managed to meet eyes for a moment. Chuck moved behind Casey's chair and grabbed the handles. Sarah almost laughed when the NSA agent's arms flew from his side and he slapped at Chuck's hands with his own.

"Ah—Ow! Why did you…?"

"I can move my own damn chair, Bartowski." And Casey perfectly mimicked the wheelchair version of a teenage girl stomping off after having the last word, rolling himself into the other room where the big screen was.

Sarah followed, Chuck falling in behind her, still rubbing his hands with a pout plastered on his face.

When Beckman finally appeared, her presence announced in the usual two-beep fashion, she seemed to be in a rush. Sarah explained the issues she and Chuck had with the prisoners, Heather Chandler's aid in disabling the Volkoff threat on the roof, and ended with the assurance that both Chandler and Hugo Panzer were being safely delivered to separate lockdown facilities. Beckman commended Casey on his sacrifice, and there was a hint of off-handedness about it, making Sarah think that perhaps the general had had this particular talk with her best agent many times before and was now just going through the motions.

"Uh, General Beckman?" Chuck jumped in just as she was about to sign off.

Her gaze flicked impatiently to the side, possibly at the door to her office. "What, Agent Bartowski?" she quite nearly snapped. Sarah winced a bit for Chuck.

"Heather Chandler said something about a project she worked on before with Volkoff called Operation Bea—"

"Agent Bartowski, I don't have the time for this. I'll let you know when you have another mission. Good day."

The screen went blank and Sarah quickly looked over Casey's head at the flash of disappointment on Chuck's face. She wondered how many times he'd be shut down during his search for his mother before he gave up the search completely.

But if there was one thing she knew about Chuck Bartowski, it was that he was relentless and determined when it came to his family.

She fidgeted uncomfortably and left the room, feeling his eyes on her the whole way.

Relentless and determined. Heh. That was what she was afraid of.

The apartment was dark by the time she and Chuck walked in. She'd busied herself all day with paperwork at Castle and Chuck had a shift at the Nerd Herd desk. She'd brought him lunch and it had gone exactly how she'd wanted it to. It was quiet and companionable. They talked about Jeffster's antics and laughed, Sarah made another pop culture reference which surprised and impressed Chuck and she'd thrown a crumpled napkin at him when he made a huge deal out of it.

When his lunch was over, she'd kissed him and gone back to Castle.

When he'd finished his shift, he wandered down and they left together in her Porsche.

As Chuck flicked on the living room light, Sarah peeked out the curtains at Casey's apartment across the way. The living room light was on. The man was either drowning his boredom in a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black or he was polishing his Reagan statue for the thousandth time today.

With a chuckle, she strode away from the window and continued into the bedroom, setting her bag down and kicking her shoes off.

"Can't believe it's been two days since I've slept in this bed," Chuck sighed behind her, looking longingly at the comfortable mattress.

"Yeah," she answered, pulling her jacket off and hanging it in the closet. She peeked over her shoulder at him and saw that his hands had been stuffed into his pockets again and his head hung low. She wasn't sure if he was still thinking about the badly timed ring incident or if he was thinking about his mom again, but she was too afraid of it being the former to ask.

It was best that they didn't mention it. He hadn't proposed. It was a terrifying moment for both of them, and the moments afterward were so awkward but it was over now.

Over, she scoffed. Then why had she dwelled on it all day? What if he had been proposing? What would she have said? I'm not ready? Maybe we should take it slow, like you promised? 'Super slow' he'd said. She knew the ring was for Morgan's mom and that Chuck was incredibly unfortunate to have noticed it on the ground in that moment, and to have picked it up and held it up to the light in the way he had…down on one knee and all that. But a part of her was a bit upset with him.

She watched him pull his tie off and unbutton his Nerd Herd shirt. "I'm gonna take a shower," he sighed, tugging his shoes and socks off, then unbuttoning his pants.

Sarah made a distracted sound of acquiescence and he disappeared into the hallway.

Why was she upset with him when it wasn't really his fault? It wasn't his fault. Not at all. But she was mad. Why'd he put them in that awkward position? She couldn't separate the Chuck turning on the shower in the bathroom at this moment with the alternate Chuck in her mind that had knelt down with a ring and proposed to her, despite their agreement to take things slow. Why would he do that to her?

He knew her better than anyone else in the entire world knew her, better than anyone else ever would. Perhaps even better than she knew herself, at times. Though she waved that thought away immediately; no one would ever know her as much as she knew herself. It was in her nature to keep certain things to herself, and probably always would.

She growled at herself. Chuck didn't propose, and he had no intention of proposing. What's wrong with you, Walker?

A flood of realization came over her. Before Chuck, she hadn't even thought of marriage. It wasn't something she joked about with Carina, and she definitely hadn't thought about it with Bryce. And she knew for sure he'd never thought about marrying her. He would have laughed hysterically at the notion.

She was a CIA agent. Love, marriage, babies…all of those things were for other women, women with their heads planted firmly on their shoulders, their feet planted firmly in one place.

That had been before she fell in love.

And that was Chuck's fault.

That was why she was angry with him, as unwarranted as she knew it was. She loved him so completely and unabashedly that she had thought about it. Had been thinking about it for awhile now.

The future.

Jack Burton had inadvertently taught his daughter to fear the future. At least, she thought it was inadvertent. It made her feel better to assume he hadn't purposefully ruined her ability to function emotionally like a normal person.

Even as a very young child, she'd been afraid that tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that, or maybe next week or next month, her father would leave again and she wouldn't see him for months, a year, two years. And so she'd gone to bed with him kissing her forehead, calling her his little darlin', and she'd feared that the next morning when she woke up, she'd find her grandmother angrily cracking eggs into a bowl, the usual sign that her father had left without so much as a note telling them or apologizing to the daughter he'd abandoned once again.

And when she'd gotten older and began traveling with her dad, helping him with his cons until they settled in San Diego (as much as a father-daughter con team could settle), she feared the day the law would catch up to him and he'd abandon her again. When she stumbled onto their home that fateful day in high school to find police cars swarming the place, she knew she'd been right to be afraid.

So she joined the CIA where she'd had an uncertain future from the very beginning. Each mission could have been her last and in some twisted way that had made her feel safe. That didn't mean she hadn't fought with everything in her to survive in death-defying situations. She wanted to live. But the fact that she could die at any moment left her with a sense of unexplainable relief. She had nothing to worry about, no one to worry about, except herself. There was no one to let her down, no one to be taken from her.

Bryce's death had been an exception in its own way. He was the longest partner she'd had up until his betrayal, and she'd formed a bond that extended past partnership, and even past sex. She never really loved him the way she should have, and she could say that with certainty now that she did love Chuck. But Chuck had been there to pick up the pieces after she found out about Bryce being killed. She'd focused her entire self on the mission, and began finding her focus wandering to her nerdy and good-hearted asset. Bryce's loss was shoved to the background, as terrible as it felt to think it now that he really and truly was dead.

And now there was Chuck, giving her a life outside of the CIA, family and friends to call her own, people who knew who she was (maybe not on a deeper level) and accepted it, people who trusted her and who she trusted.

Here was her future, walking into their bedroom with a towel around his waist and another in his hands with which he was rubbing his wet hair vigorously.

And suddenly she was afraid again. Terrified, even.

When had this happened?

When had she allowed this to happen?

She cursed herself again for her traitorous thoughts. She loved Chuck so very deeply, with everything in her. He was her world. She needed him. She would always need him. Nothing would ever change that. Was it so bad to think of a future with him?

No, it wasn't. She calmed a bit and changed into a pair of sleeping shorts and a tank.

Marriage was the next step in the progression of a normal relationship, wasn't it? But she and Chuck were anything but normal, Sarah chided herself. They would never be a normal couple. So why did they have to pretend they were? Why get married when it would change everything she loved about them?

What was wrong with where they were now? They were so happy. Sarah knew she'd never been so happy ever in her entire life. If she'd been able to smash together all of the happiest moments from her prior years of life, it still wouldn't add up to the utter contentment she felt living with Chuck, sharing his life. Everything was perfect between them. They didn't have huge fights, they worked well together, their sex life was 'en fuego' as Chuck would put it, and Sarah had never been more in love with him. They weren't married, but that didn't mean she didn't love him with every last fibre of her being. And it didn't mean she wouldn't fight to her very last breath to protect him, to keep him safe, Intersect or not. But she knew Chuck was expecting to marry her at some point. Which meant he was also expecting children.

As she climbed into bed, she shivered. Just the word 'children' made Sarah feel as if she'd had a stroke, like half her body functions shut down and she'd lost all semblance of control. She knew it was abnormal for a woman of thirty to be so averse to the thought of kids. That whole biological clock ticking thing people just loved to tell women her age. Chuck let her know more than once that he wasn't opposed to it, both times completely unaware that he was doing it, she suspected.

The first was in bed the night after she'd finally unpacked. She'd meant for that night to be playful. She'd worn nothing but her underwear and one of Chuck's dress shirts, knowing he loved when she wore his clothes to bed. She'd made the symbolic gesture of longevity, unpacking and hanging her things in the closet. And although she hadn't planned it, she'd laid her heart out on a platter for him, admitting that she carried the photograph of them from almost two years ago around in her suitcase when she went on missions. (What she hadn't told him was that she'd carried that photo for years, not just since they'd been dating, but she suspected he figured that out by the heartfelt look he'd given her.) The rest of the night was supposed to have been non-serious banter, cuddling, drinking sparkling water, listening to records, canoodling, and most likely having sex. While most of those things had occurred, Sarah feigned tiredness a lot sooner than she'd planned to. He'd told her they had a real future ahead of them, and it had felt good to hear him say it, to feel his lips brush against hers, until his next words made her plummet violently back down to Earth.

Maybe Awesome's right. Marriage, baby. Who knows? Maybe we're next.

She shivered again as Chuck did his usual bed time ritual of plugging in his electronics and turning off all the lights except those on either side of their bed.

The second time he'd let slip his want for children was earlier that morning when they'd had their chat. When she told him how much his words had scared her, he immediately began rambling away, assuring her that he wasn't ready for parenthood either. But he'd slipped three words in that made her uneasy at the time, and left her a bit terrified now. One day, hopefully.

She laid back against the shelves behind their bed and felt Chuck crawl in next to her.

"This feels good," he murmured over a yawn.

In spite of the tumultuous thoughts surging wildly through her head, Sarah smiled widely at the sound of his voice. She opened her eyes and looked down at him. He had his right arm bent beneath his head and his left hovering near the bulge of her body beneath the covers. She dropped her hand into his and squeezed tightly. "Hey, so…" She stopped, biting her lip. "…Are you okay about the whole…Heather Chandler, Beacon thing?"

Textbook subversion, Agent Walker.

She pushed down the guilt. Using spy tricks on the man she loved wasn't her favorite pastime, it had to be said, but she couldn't see any way around it at the moment.

"Yeah," he sighed, turning his head to smile a bit sadly up at her. She slid down into the bed and propped herself up with her right arm, looking down at him and playing with his fingers with the her left hand. "At least Heather gave us something besides her usual needling and oh-so-fun banter." Sarah snorted a little at that. "But I dunno. I dunno where to go from here. I dunno if Operation Beacon will mean anything or if it's just another dead end. And I can't ask Beckman about it."

"You almost did earlier today."

"Yeah, you saw how well that worked out," he scoffed, shaking his head.

"We don't need Beckman. At least not yet. We'll find your mom, Chuck. I promise."

He gave her a hesitant smile, which then widened into the brilliant grin that set her insides aflame with the unbridled love she felt for him. "I love you," he breathed, dislodging his hand from hers and tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear.

She smiled back because she couldn't help it. "Love you too, Chuck."

As per usual, it was an unspoken agreement, a mere meeting of their eyes, that made them simultaneously turn over to flick off the lights on either side of their bed.

When Sarah laid back down with her head on her pillow, she fought the urge to cross the distance between them and nestle into his side.

"G'night, Sarah," he whispered.

"Night, Chuck." She curled herself into a ball, her back to him, telling herself that when she woke up in the morning, all of her worries will have disappeared.

She wanted so badly to snuggle and the darkness of the room became oppressive and she just wanted Chuck to be pressed against her. Something about this whole thing was making her lose control.

Just when she thought she might start to freak out, she felt the mattress shift and the warmth of Chuck's body enveloped her. Her breath hitched in her chest when he rounded her torso with his arms and hugged her back to his front, his lips dropping soft kisses on her neck.

All of her fears and worries flew out of her as his warm feet covered hers and he pulled her even closer. "You were shivering," he breathed against her jaw, his lips still dragging a soft pattern along her skin.

She smiled, intense emotion throbbing almost painfully in her chest. She wasn't sure there were words to describe how incredibly grateful she was in that moment to have him.

"Thank you, Chuck."

A/N: Oh hi. So I hope you guys liked it, and I hope you review, even if you didn't like it. Thanks go out to brotowski for making me feel like it was necessary to write another missing scene and post it today. I seriously loved writing this one.

Something about pulling Sarah's neuroses out of that pretty head make me really damn excited. So Chucksters, hope I've pleased you as much as writing it pleased me!

Til next time my friends!