Chapter 1 - After the funeral.
Walking back into the courtyard of Casa Bartowski, Chuck and Sarah were mainly silent, there wasn't much to talk about. Chuck looked around. The courtyard was clean and back in order again after Ellie and Devon's wedding reception, there wasn't so much as a scrap of napkin, the NSA crew assigned to the job by Casey had been meticulous in their clean-up.
There was no movement from anywhere in the house. Chuck's dad had returned temporarily to the caravan he'd been staying in, which was situated on a plot of land a hundred miles outside the town of Barstow, CA, to gather up his few belongings, since he would now be living for a while with Ellie and Devon once they returned from their honeymoon. Chuck was still living with them as well and could stay as long as he wanted, but that was likely to change since he was really feeling the need for his own space and didn't want to keep intruding on his sister and new bro, especially since now they were off to their nuptials for real as husband and wife.
Chuck and Sarah had just been to Bryce Larkin's funeral. Again. This time, neither of them had remained apart from the rest of the party, there had been no need since as far as Bryce's few friends and relatives were concerned, Bryce had died the previous year, so there was no 'party' there as such this time.
The CIA had decided not to alter the death certificate, in order to not cause undue grief all over again. Therefore, the funeral this time was merely the disinterment of the grave to remove the coffin long enough to put his body in it, since last time he'd been absent. The only people at the austere ceremony this time were Chuck and Sarah.
Casey didn't really like Bryce, so he had opted out.
Chuck had gone over and over in his head, those last few horrible moments which would remain forever etched in his memory. He had sat beside Bryce in the Intersect room and watched helplessly as the life leaked out of him.
Chuck stopped at the front door and fished the key out of his suit pocket.
"Can I ask you for a favour?" Sarah said quietly, looking at his features as he turned to her. Chuck's eyes quickly roamed over Sarah's face, finally settling on her stormy blue eyes. His breath caught in his throat as once again, he was stunned at how beautiful she was. Today her eyes were wistful and pained, her eyebrows drawn together in a double bow of sadness.
"Sure, anything." he said just as quietly. Sarah swallowed and licked her lips, her blue eyes uncertain as they probed the brown depths of his.
"Can you come with me tonight, to a restaurant maybe? I could do with the company, and I have a few things on my mind which I need to say." Chuck shrugged his shoulders and tried to smile reassuringly.
"Arm twisted. How about De Biasio's?" he suggested.
Sarah nodded and smiled back. "Uh ... mhm ... sounds good. Want me to pick you up?"
"Just wait here and let me change out of the penguin suit, I'll be quick." Chuck inserted the key in the front door and pushed it open.
"Good, I want to change out of this stuff too. We'll swing past my place on the way there."
They walked into the dark living room and Chuck switched on the lights, dumping his keys on the table beside the door. Sarah went over to the couch and sat perched pensively on the edge, looking as if she wanted nothing more than to run away somewhere. Chuck frowned to himself, noticing with puzzlement the unusually dour expression on his ex-handler. He figured since it was still painfully raw and close, it had to do with Bryce's death. He tried to put it out of his mind, but something sat at the back of his brain and poked at his imagination like an electrified cattle-prod. He had a dreadful feeling that something was horribly wrong, and that tonight was going to end badly.
True enough to his word, he stripped out of the funeral suit, sprayed on some deodorant and quickly changed into his trademark jeans and sneakers and a dark polo shirt. He sprinted out into the living room, in case Sarah had fled the house for some reason. She hadn't, he grinned at her as he back-pedalled and stopped with a skid. She smiled back.
"Ready. Shall we?" He breathed. She stood up and walked over to the front door.
After turning on the porch-light, he closed and locked the door behind him, and walked up beside her. Slightly to his surprise, she reached out and grabbed his hand, locking her fingers between his, her hold quite firm, almost as if she was afraid he'd let her go. He was surprised because Ellie and Devon were well on their way to their secret honeymoon spot, so they wouldn't notice anything out of the ordinary. And officially Sarah was no longer his handler so there was no specific reason to pretend they were together any more. Normally they were usually only 'selling' the relationship when someone was around who might notice that they weren't always acting like a regular couple.
"Uh ... there's ..." he began, but was cut off abruptly.
"Because I want to." Sarah said simply and began walking, pulling on his arm to make him follow. Chuck walked beside her in silence, there seemed to be something final and desperate in her hold, and he dreaded hearing what she eventually would have to say to him.
Sarah had been almost as quick to change, and she too had donned jeans, a knitted shirt and a pair of black cross-trainers.
The trip from her apartment to De Biasio's was a matter of a few minutes in the Porsche, so it wasn't too long before they were shown to a table, seated and handed a drink menu each by Louis, their sommelier for the evening. Sarah glanced quickly over the pages and chose a Pinot Noir for herself which Chuck accepted as well, trusting to her taste. She ordered the bottle be brought to the table. Louis nodded and collected the menus.
"James will be here shortly with your menus." he said with a patronising smile. Chuck and Sarah merely nodded and returned his smile. He bustled off to the kitchen.
As they waited for the wine to arrive, Chuck snapped the end off a bread-stick and began chewing it distractedly. His stomach was in knots and he was trying to stop his imagination running riot. Into his mind came unbidden various scenarios, from Sarah being re-assigned and relocated to some distant place with a new alias that he would never know, to her having something horrible to say about or to him, to his greatest fear - her flying off to England to join up with Cole Barker, the MI6 agent who like Bryce, had made Chuck feel almost insignificant.
In every case, Chuck was being poked by that cattle-prod at the back of his mind ... 'Sarah is going to leave!'
He had to let Beckman know he was back as the Intercept. Maybe then ...
"Chuck?" Sarah hissed and grabbed his forearm. "Did you flash on something?" Chuck stopped chewing, did a double-take and blinked rapidly.
"Ahm ... er ... no ... no flash, not ... no I didn't flash, guess I was just zoning out there for a second. Sorry." He smiled weakly.
"Oh ... OK. Am I that boring that you need to zone me out?" Sarah was trying to inject some levity into her mood. It was a trifle forced but he appreciated the distraction. Chuck was immediately apologetic.
"Oh no Sarah, I'm sorry. No, I didn't mean it like that. I guess ... I guess it's ... it's ..." He struggled to fit words to his thoughts, and failed, and shrugged his shoulders, a lopsided smile crossed his face but faded quickly. Sarah mistook his pensiveness and smiled sadly back at him.
"Yeah it's not an easy thing to do. Whatever his faults, Bryce didn't deserve to die like that. But ..." she sighed "... that's our job, and much as it might hurt sometimes, that's the sacrifice we have to be willing to make to serve a greater good." Chuck gave her a nod, but remained silent and didn't correct her mistaken thoughts. She continued. "At times it's that mortality that drives us, it's sometimes the only thing we have that lets us know that we're alive, and how quickly that life can be taken away."
"Yeah I know some of that, it drives me nuts sometimes with the danger you and Casey put yourselves in, some of the things we've done have been completely crazy." Sarah looked at him and laughed softly.
"Oh, like you're Mr. Safety First? You've been known to leap in before you have any idea of the dangers at all. You sometimes do things which make what people like Cole and Carina do, look tame by comparison. You frighten the living daylights out of me at times, especially when both Casey and I have ordered you to stay in the car."
"Yeah well I keep telling you 'it's never safe in the car!'" Chuck's grin spread widely across his face. "Especially the Nerd Herders, I'd hate to see what the insurance people have to say about them, mine had been totalled and blown up so many times it's not funny."
At that moment, the sommelier brought over the bottle, presented the label for their inspection, and after deftly cutting the cover and popping the cork with a flourish, he poured them each a long stemmed flute shaped glass of the burgundy coloured wine, after which he nodded and smiled his patronising smile and withdrew to another part of the restaurant.
Chuck picked up his glass and sombrely intoned "To Bryce." Sarah picked up her own glass and quietly said the same words. They clinked their glasses together in salute, and took a sip.
A moment later, the waiter came over to their table.
"Good evening. I am James and I will wait on your table this evening." As he spoke, he placed menus in front of them. "I shall return in a few minutes to take your orders," he nodded, smiled and walked back to the kitchens.
Chuck looked a little bug-eyed at the waiter, as he had at the sommelier. He was beginning to wonder how expensive this dinner was going to be. This kind of service didn't come cheap. But then since he'd been so generously remunerated by the government for his nearly two years of service with Sarah and Casey, even after paying for Ellie and Devon's wedding and reception party, there was still quite a healthy chunk of it left. It wasn't as if he couldn't afford a night out on the town like this at least once in a while.
They both picked up their menus and opened them to the first page.
"OK, anything you can recommend?" Chuck asked. Sarah looked up almost absently, and shook her head.
"Not really, I've been here a couple of times now and everything's been really good so far. I suppose the Veal Scallopini might be good or the Carbonara. I'm thinking of having the Pollo Napolitana tonight."
Chuck scanned the pages and eventually found the meal. Pollo Napolitana, a chicken breast in a special sauce with blanched vegetables. Shrugging his shoulders he thought it sounded all right as well and after settling on an entree of Minestrone soup, he put down the menu.
After arriving, the meal proceeded quietly, the conversation stilted and halting in between bites, steering uncomfortably away at times from Bryce and the funeral. Chuck tore off a piece of flat bread which he dipped in the sauce that had been very generously slathered all over the chicken.
"This is very good Sarah, I see why you brought your dad here. I like the atmosphere and the food, it's a little upmarket for me since I normally rely on Morgan's ten dollar meal formula. But I could see myself getting used to eating like this more often."
"Yeah it's good but strange as it may seem, you eventually get tired of restaurant food too. I prefer home cooking, but I really can't do it in my apartment, it's against the rules and besides, I haven't the room to do it."
"Oh ... I don't know, I could see you setting up a camp stove in the bathroom. Potatoes on the boil with sausages and marshmallows on sticks every night. Yum!"
"Oh please don't say sausage, I was so tired of working at the Wienerlicious. Every night I'd go home with my uniform reeking of burned cheese and god knows what else. I think that if I smelled another of their sausages any time soon, I would probably be ill."
"Yeah, I suppose when you consider it from that standpoint, Orange Orange is an improvement."
The meal was eventually done, and they were waiting for a while to let the food settle before ordering coffee and dessert.
"Look Chuck, I need to say a few things to you tonight, but first I need to ask some questions as well. I want you to be honest with me, and you can speak openly here, I'm sure Casey hasn't had time to bug the entire restaurant ..." Chuck's eyes widened.
"You seriously think he's bugged the restaurant?" he hissed, looking around, trying to find the tell-tale cameras and recording equipment he'd begun recognising on sight. Sarah laughed quietly and reaching over to get his attention, tapped him on the hand, she left her own fingers resting softly on his.
"No. I don't think he's bugged the restaurant Chuck, I was just saying ... well not yet anyway. Relax, there's nobody listening in, and no cameras. Trust me." Chuck looked down at his hand where Sarah's still touched it.
"All right, but just so you know, I wouldn't put anything past the big oaf, he's already put cameras in places I wouldn't have dreamed anybody would bother. I'm surprised there aren't any cameras in the cubicles at the Buy More ..." Chuck's expression of disgust as Sarah dead-panned it was comical. "Oh you can't be serious, is he that sick ..." but she couldn't keep a straight face any longer, she broke into open laughter, something he hadn't seen in a while. It confused him, he squinted at her sharply, brows drawn together quizzically.
"I'm sorry, I couldn't resist, the look on your face was classic." Her eyes were glistening with mirth, It had been such a long time since Chuck had seen her genuinely and openly happy and unabashed.
"Hmm ... so you're saying ..." Her expression changed into an almost straight face, but there was still a twinkle in her eyes.
"No, I don't think he's bugged the Buy More toilets. Look, I know he comes on strong and overdoes things but that ... he is just trying to be protective and think of all possibilities. His intentions were usually honourable, if a bit heavy-handed." She took a deep breath and her smile and mirth faded. She looked into Chuck's eyes. "Anyway, questions. First, why did you download the Intersect? After saying all this time that you wanted your life back."
Chuck puffed out his cheeks and sighed heavily, giving her a pained look.
"Yeah I figured that would come into it sometime tonight." He rubbed his fingers nervously through the tangled curls of his hair.
"And I want the truth, all of it. You kept insisting that you weren't a spy or a hero, even though you would do exactly the sort of thing a real spy does." She probed his face, drilled her eyes into his. Chuck felt a little uncomfortable under the glare of her intense stare, he felt like he was undergoing an interrogation.
"Well ..." he began. Sarah kept her glare up, not speaking, expecting her questions to be answered. Chuck stalled, taking a sip of his wine, trying to put off the inevitable. He put the glass down, trying to keep his hands steady, failing. He cleared his throat. "Ahrm ... well, you see ..." Sarah's glare intensified. He swallowed hard, there was an obstacle the size of a tennis ball threatening to close off his throat.
"Chuuuck?" she prompted and tightened her hand on his. He surrendered, the words coming out rapidly in a long string of disjointed conjoined sentences.
"OK, after the conversation we had you and I, a while back, about you being re-assigned and everything, well I knew that you'd ... that you would be ..." Sarah closed her eyes knowingly and nodded. "... you would be taken away from me. And ... well, you know how I feel about you, and even though you said there was no ... that there was nothing ... under the truth drug, that we ... that you and I could ... that we couldn't ..." He looked apologetically at her. "I'm sorry Sarah, even though I know you don't ... that you have to ... you know, not ... that you're not interested ... that way ... in me ..." Again he looked sheepishly at her, his throat closing as he felt his voice wavering and his worst fears being realised.
"All right, stop. You can stop Chuck, I get the gist of what you meant."
"Look Sarah, I don't want to be without you ... I want you in my life, and if this is the only way it can happen - and I don't know if it can because Beckman doesn't know yet - but if it's the only way for me to have you with me ..." He shrugged and looked down at his hands miserably, picking nervously at a ragged fingernail. "Then that's the price I am willing to pay. I get that I'm just 'the asset' to you, but if that's all I get to have, then I've decided you're worth it. I can be satisfied with that. Yeah, I'm satisfied with that." He trailed off. Sarah brought her other hand over and covered both of his, squeezing which stopped his nervous fingernail picking. He closed his eyes and swallowed, trying to dislodge the furry tennis ball in his throat, and waited for the backlash and berating at his foolishness.
"Oh Chuck ..." Sarah sighed hard as she picked her words carefully. "You shouldn't have done that, not for that, not for me." She broke one hand free to lift up his chin so she could look him in the eyes. "That's too high a price to pay. For any reason, especially since you tried so hard and for so long to get the thing out of your head."
"I know ... but ..." he began protesting.
"Please let me finish. It's my turn, I have something to say. And I need to say it now, before I lose my train of thought." Chuck nodded and waited. Sarah nodded back and composed herself, she drew a deep breath, sighed it out in a huff and spoke slowly. "I'm going to say some things Chuck, and I'm probably going to mess it up. But please let me finish without interruptions, OK?"
"Sure." he said softly. "Go ahead." This was it, the moment Chuck had been dreading all evening.
"Chuck, you're not just an asset to me. Ever since I walked into the Buy More and first saw you, I liked what I saw, and I told you so on our first date. I saw a kind considerate and thoughtful person who cared about others even if they were complete strangers. You were so different to anybody I'd met before. I didn't know people like that existed. Somehow I had always wanted to believe they did but you were the first I'd ever met. When you made that little girl smile, the ballerina, I choked up inside. And the more time I spent with you, the stronger that conviction became. But my training was always getting in the way. I was not allowed to get involved in a personal way with an asset, that's the rules. And I had to try to maintain that distance because I knew I was constantly under surveillance, Casey's cameras are everywhere." Chuck nodded grimly but remained silent. "But you made that so difficult. Not getting involved with you became almost impossible for me. All the people I have ever dealt with before were almost always self serving and selfish, usually only after something for themselves, using any means at their disposal to achieve it, and that goes for Bryce and Carina and Cole and all the other people you have been introduced to who have had anything to do with me. They're all alike, even my dad." She paused momentarily to pick up the thread of her thoughts.
"That day when Longshore was about to take you away, I was close to ... to ... well, I didn't know what I was going to do really. But I just had to see you one last time before he did take you." Chuck thought back to that day and shuddered, but he also remembered that Sarah had been crying as they said goodbye to each other. Sarah's voice was wavering a little and she seemed to have a misty look in her eyes. "You know, Cole said something a few weeks ago which struck deep. He was talking about agents and how we're supposed to somehow cut ourselves off from our emotions and become these ... these machines, perfect physically and intellectually, without remorse or compassion or fear. He wanted me to go with him to England. He said ... he said that people like us, spies, it's not often we find someone we can care about, who care about us, and when we do ... we're supposed to just walk away." Chuck closed his eyes and drew in an icy breath. He'd known it all along somehow, that Cole was where she would be going and this dinner evening was her attempt to put Chuck's unrealistic desires out of his head. Sarah continued her recollection. "He said, that doesn't seem fair." She squeezed Chuck's hands and he opened his eyes to look into hers, and saw that they were brimming with tears, ready to fall at any moment. "And I told him it doesn't seem fair, because it isn't." Chuck squeezed her hands back and smiled even as he felt his heart crumbling to pieces.
"Yeah, Cole ... he's a ... he's great," was all he could manage through the thick lump in his throat. He could feel the emotions gathering and his face getting redder, he blinked his hot eyes several times.
"Chuck ..." this was it, the final thrust, the dagger plunging in deep to pierce his soul. She was going to tell him she was packed and would be leaving in the morning, like she had done just before the wedding. He waited for the pain to come, he felt his heart hammering fiercely. He supposed in a remote and disjointed way that Sarah must be able to hear it trying to beat its way out of his ribcage. If it kept going like this, it would rupture, or come flying out of his chest to land spluttering on the table in front of her. She hesitated, breathing hard. "... Oh boy, I'm just no good at this stuff. I told you I would mess this up." She squeezed his hands one more time and closed her eyes which caused several tears to cascade down her cheeks. She took one long shuddering breath, let it out in a drawn out sigh, and opened her tear glistening eyes to stare into his.
"OK, here goes. Chuck, I'm ... I am ... in love with you, I'm sure of it, and I have been almost from the very beginning, from the very first time I saw you."
Chuck's hammering heart stopped beating altogether, and his eyes opened wide, looking for all the world like a pair of saucers. Distantly he was wondering if there had been a sound when his jaw hit the tabletop. Several seconds went by before he felt his heart restart.
"And I am so sorry that it has taken me this long to say it to you." Chuck swallowed hard, and mustered every ounce of coherency he could reach, which wasn't much.
"Bu ... but ... what about the truth drug? I asked you then ... and you said ..."
"I know, I know. And I'm so sorry about that. Like I said, I was supposed to not get involved, or at worst try to stop you from getting involved if I couldn't stop myself. I tried so hard, but ..." she sniffed and smiled at him in a completely disarming way through her tear glistened eyelashes "... you're very ... um ... difficult to resist." Chuck's grin broadened until he felt as if the muscles in his cheeks would tear his face in half. "I've had CIA training to resist all kinds of things, such as the effects of several drugs, including many of the Pentothal derivatives. I couldn't do anything about the poison in the drug, but I could resist the effects of the truth serum part."
"What about ... what about Bryce and Cole? I mean, they're so much tougher and cooler and ..."
"They're tough, sure, and they're nice enough people, but in the end, they're selfish and self interested. You're nothing like them ..."
"I know, I squeal like a schoolgirl at any sign of danger." Chuck said in a self deprecating way. "I faint at needles, I ..."
"And yet you rush in and save the day, overcoming any of your imagined short comings to get the job done. You'd throw yourself in front of a speeding train to save a friend. Or worse, you'd tackle Triad assassins and ticking time bombs." Chuck winced at the memory of what she spoke about.
"In many ways you're far braver than Bryce, Casey, Cole or me. We're almost ... broken, we do what we do because it's the only way we know how to function, Cole has an incredible pain threshold and he can use it to his advantage, but pain is there for a reason, it's the body's way of telling you that something is wrong. He is able to overcome it or go beyond it, and that's not only dangerous, it's potentially self-destructive. Casey is a gung-ho marine who just jumps in the breach because that's what he's been trained to do, without question or much thought about the consequences.
"But they ... we, usually know our limits. It's not that we just ignore them, it's that we can function continuously up to those limits. And there's very little fear associated with it because it's been drummed out of us, we've been conditioned to function on the edge, or even over it, we're like adrenaline junkies. But you don't do that, you know your own fears and limitations, and yet you still jump in without the benefit of that training and conditioning."
"All right, I get that part, in some weird and twisted way, I think I understand your fearlessness a bit better now. But you're deadly with knives and guns and your fists and feet." Chuck pointed out. "How is that being 'broken'?"
"I discovered very early that I had good eye to hand co-ordination, that I had a knack for accuracy. I can throw knives and shoot guns and I usually hit what I aim for. I've also done a lot of martial training like kick-boxing and Tae-Kwon-do and so on. I rely on all that because it's kept me alive so far. But it's also dangerous, if I get too cocky I can over estimate my own abilities. And trust me, I have done that so many times before.
"Like the others, I've been trained to ignore the fear. But sometimes when I've been in a dark mood, I go looking for ... there was one occasion, in ..." Sarah shook her head. "I'm getting side-tracked now and it'll just get me even more muddled up. My point mainly is that I am in love with you Chuck. I need you to know and to understand that. My resistance to you right now is at an all time low and I can't stand it any more, and ... and I just had to let you know, and ... and I thought you would want to know as well."
"Oh god yes Sarah! I've wanted you to say it for so long. Ahm ... well, uh ... you know how I feel ... have always felt, about you. I ..." he stopped, wondering if he should tell her what had gone through his mind that evening, and decided he should. "... I need to tell you something as well."
Sarah looked at him, wondering if he was about to tell her something she really didn't want to hear. But she nodded cautiously. "OK."
"All this evening, from the funeral up until now, I was dying inside. I thought you were finally going to tell me that since I am no longer your asset, that you would be moving on, that even though I'm the Intersect again, you wouldn't be hanging around any more. I'd become convinced somehow, that you were going to go to Cole. That I'd done the most incredibly stupid thing in the universe and downloaded the Intersect for nothing."
"You have! You didn't need to do it, I ..."
"Please Sarah, let me finish now? Please?" She broke off and snapped her lips shut, sighed and reached out to take a sip from her glass, it was empty. Chuck saw and reached out with a lanky arm to pick up the wine bottle, tipping the last of its contents into Sarah's glass as he continued speaking. "Ever since you and Casey and the Intersect blew into my life, everything has been this ... whirlwind of ... I dunno ... stuff - impossible situations, danger, fear, panic, an adrenaline pumping rush of emotions and near-death experiences. And I've never felt I belonged in that world, I just wasn't a spy, a hero. I couldn't think of anyone except for Morgan maybe, who was less qualified to be that kind of person than me. But I looked back on what we'd done and what had been said over the last several months ... or couple of years I should say, and I realised I had been fooling myself. After all that I had experienced, and all that I had seen and accomplished, I could never really go back to a 'normal life', not because it wouldn't be a comfort zone I could deal with, but because life now has meaning and purpose, which it didn't really have before. I've done things and seen things which have really made a difference to the world, and that feels good. I can make a mark on the future.
"But ever since I met you, I've wanted so badly to be a part of your life, for you to be a part of mine. And now I can't stand the thought of losing you. If for some reason there was a chance that you could stay here, or ... or for me to be with you, then I knew I had to take that chance, the best possibility I could think of was for me to become your asset again. And just to let you know that I didn't jump on the Intersect idea entirely without any other thought, I had reconsidered what the General offered before, a job with the Intersect team, I just figured that was a one shot deal, and I'd already turned it down. But even if it wasn't, there would never be a guarantee that I could be anywhere near you, they would probably ship you out to somewhere like ... uh ... Libya, to take down the insurgents using potato peelers or something. And I'd be stuck in some boring office away from you."
"But Chuck ..."
"I know! I know! I've probably made the biggest mistake in my life by doing what I did, but the alternative in my mind at that moment in time, was to not have you with me. And that was just unacceptable."
"But Chuck, the Intersect, it was gone, you could have gone back to your old ..."
"That's what I'm trying to say, just as you will never be normal, neither can I any more, and as much as I protested about it before, I'm not really sure I want to go back to the way things were before the Intersect. I love you Sarah Walker, I always have, and I always will. I tried separating myself from you when we had our cover relationship, I tried breaking up with you but I always felt hollow and empty afterwards. I always came back to the realisation that I just didn't want to lose you, not now that I've found you. And the funny thing is I never even realised what was missing in my life, until I met you."
There was a lull, a profound pause, silence for a moment seemed to be almost deafening, until the noise of the surrounding restaurant patrons impinged on their ears. Chuck and Sarah looked into each others eyes and saw the charged sensations coursing with reckless abandon through both of their systems. Words could not adequately describe the emotions they were now experiencing. Finally Chuck broke the silence.
"So where does that leave us now? Where do we go from here?" he said with a soft inquiring tone.
"Well Casey has already briefed General Beckman about the situation, if I know him his report will be both long and complete. Which will include you and the Intersect. Other than that I'm not sure, don't know what else to do yet apart from go back to the way it was before."
"Well I know something I want to do, right now." Chuck smiled and leaned over the table. Sarah saw the intent in his gaze and met him halfway. Their eyes closed as their lips touched; not frantically like fugitives on the lam, not experimentally like a new couple exploring each other's limits; deeply and fully as the gravity of the situation at last sank in fully to them both. Chuck's right hand reached up and cupped Sarah's face, Sarah did the same and let herself fall fully into the contact, her mouth opening, inviting Chuck in. Her tongue gingerly darted out and touched his bottom lip, dancing around its edge experimentally. He did the same, both met in the middle and caressed each other. Their breathing sped up and became more urgent. After some minutes, Sarah reluctantly leaned back slightly and broke the contact. Chuck opened his eyes a little quizzically, then a broad grin spread across his flushed face as he saw Sarah's glorious smile. He licked his lips and sighed deeply.
"I think we'd better pay the check and leave, before they kick us out for indecent behaviour" Sarah said softly in a husky voice.
"Yeah, probably a good idea. Besides, I'm becoming all sleek and fat, dessert would just be overkill."
Walking back to the car in silence, both were in deep reverie. No longer just holding hands perfunctorily, the grip of both now held power and meaning. At last, both knew the true extent of the other's feelings. There could be no ambiguity, they had reached the point of no return - and gone beyond. Minds and hearts racing, the short walk was soon over, and Sarah pulled the Porsche into the late evening traffic. Soon enough she drove up to Casa Bartowski and turned off the engine.
"Want to come in for a coffee or something? I'm a little hyped right now." Chuck asked in what he hoped was an offhand manner. He didn't want to seem too desperate or eager, though he was both. Sarah looked at him a little apologetically.
"Would you be too upset if I said no thanks, just for tonight? I'm hyped up too, in several different ways, but I'm also dead on my feet. Since the wedding and the reception and fighting those guys in the Intersect building, I've pretty much been running on coffee and adrenaline and not much else. Bryce's death again, the funeral ... it's wearing me down to a stump."
Chuck tried not to show his disappointment. But Sarah noticed, and almost changed her mind. She was through with holding back and hurting herself and Chuck.
"Just coffee Sarah. I promise I'll be good." Sarah looked at him through her fringe and Chuck detected a blush.
"Chuck, It's not you being good I'm worried about," she said softly, almost shyly, "it's me."
"Oh. Oh? Oh! Oh ... uh ... OK, then no, that's fine. I get that you're worn down, I probably should be too but right now I could probably go three rounds with Casey! I'll ... oh ... no, they've already gone. It's fine, I'll grab a coffee and get some reading done."
"Chuck, right now there's nothing I want more than to ... to ... I want to come in, but ..."
"Hey, no problem, it's fine really ..."
"No it's not fine, and I know it, but let me get at least one good night's sleep, because something tells me we're probably not going to get much rest if I come in tonight, whether you promise to be good or not. Tomorrow, I'll come over for dinner and we'll see what happens. Tonight I just need some sleep and a couple of hours to get some things done."
"Really?"
"Really."
"Then you'd better pack a case with spare clothes and stuff, because if I get my way ..."
"Let's take things one step at a time. We've got all the time in the world, and I'm in no hurry to mess this up. I want to do this right. But I knew you would be anxious, just as I was, so I wanted to show you ... to tell you, that things would be OK from now on."
"Well I personally don't think I'm going to be getting much sleep tonight anyway, I bet you don't either."
"Oh I'll sleep because I'll knock myself out, you should try to as well." Chuck shrugged and grinned crookedly.
"I don't mind too much, it's not like I have to get up early to go to work."
"OK, well still, don't stay up too late, try to get some sleep please?"
"I'll try. Anyway, you'd better get going before I decide you're staying here whether you protest or not."
"I wouldn't protest Chuck." Sarah said softly, the faintest of smiles flickering across her lips and in her eyes. Chuck blinked and grinned widely back.
"Drive carefully."
"I will, g'night."
"G'night."
They both leaned into each other and the contact was electric, lips and tongues touching and caressing, hands intertwined in each other's hair, neither of them wanting the moment to end.
Minutes later, they both reluctantly broke apart, Chuck opened the car door as Sarah keyed the Porsche awake, the powerful engine bellowing in the still night. He stepped out of the car and waved. Sarah waved back, and waited until Chuck had gone into the courtyard, then gunned the black coupe out of the street.