A/N: This is a little ficlet I wrote for a prompt challenge on tumblr. The prompt was "clever in manners of speech".

Thanks to whoever the anon was who left this challenge in my tumblr ask box!

Disclaimer: I do not own "Chuck" or its characters.

Fyi, this takes place very soon after Chuck and Sarah begin dating...exclusively.

Enjoy!

Chuck emerged from the Orange Orange freezer, leaving Castle and a somewhat contrite Colonel Casey behind. The frozen yogurt shop was closed, completely dark save the moonlight filtering in the windows.

The headache from a particularly informative flash had finally ebbed to a minor twinge, and only when he turned his head too fast.

He walked around the counter and moved past the tables to the door, peering through the glass at the parking lot.

The headache would probably be completely gone if their last mission hadn't tanked so badly. Add to that the disappointed quietude in General Beckman's tone and features when they debriefed. How such a tiny woman on a big screen could be that intimidating…It was a talent.

His eyes scanned the parking lot until he saw Sarah's Porsche parked beneath one of the lights. She sat on the hood of the car, looking so small under the beam of yellow light, peering out across the empty lot. Chuck checked his watch and saw that it was nearing one in the morning.

The argument he'd just accidentally witnessed downstairs probably had more to do with everyone being tired than it did Casey being an ass hole. Granted, Casey had his moments. Either way, Chuck was filled with purpose as he opened the door and stepped outside into the chilly night air, the Buy More jacket he'd given Sarah over a year earlier clutched in his hand as he crossed the blacktop to join her.

He knew she heard him coming even though she didn't glance his way until he stopped right beside her. At least there weren't any tears. Not that he'd expected tears. She was Sarah Walker, after all.

"Put this on," he said, lifting the jacket in front of her and shaking it a little.

She smiled and looked up at him through her lashes. "Yessir," she teased in a quiet voice, taking the jacket and sliding it over her shoulders, zipping it up. For just a moment, he remembered the first time she wore it, outside of her hotel after Jack Burton had left. They hadn't heard from him since, but Sarah had kept the jacket. And every so often, he saw it hanging in the closet in her hotel room, or she would bring it with her to Castle and wrap herself in it during overnight surveillance ops.

"You okay?" he asked, leaning against her car a little, forcing himself to bring his mind back to the matter at hand.

She waved him off. "I'm fine."

"Mmmhmm," he hummed, tilting his head and crossing his arms, his tone purposefully dubious.

Sarah glared a little. "I am."

He just smiled softly and moved to sit beside her, but then stopped himself. "Am I allowed to sit on your Porsche?"

She giggled and reached up to tug him down. "Shut up."

His response was to wrap an arm around her and pull her close. Sarah dropped her head on his shoulder and sighed. They sat that way for a few minutes, the silence between them comfortable, even though Chuck had to admit, even while wearing a T-shirt under his button-up, that he was a little cold. Sitting this close to her was definitely helping.

He decided not to say anything that might interrupt the moment, as it was the first time they were alone together in the last three days. They had been so busy with the Bradley op, all three of them plotting, mapping, prepping for tonight's mission.

And even though this hadn't been the first guy they failed to bring in, for some reason it hit a little harder. Maybe because they were tired, maybe because they'd worked so hard and had been so close. The fact was that all three of them had been off their game tonight. They weren't jiving.

It happened to every team. No team could be perfect all the time.

Granted, that didn't excuse Casey from the ass hole comment Chuck heard when he walked back into the room. The ass hole comment he suspected weighed heavily on Sarah's mind now as she sat tucked into his side.

After Beckman signed off, Chuck left the conference room to take a quick shower. He'd been covered in scratches, leaves, and twigs from the tree he fell through after diving out of an opened second story window to escape a spray of bullets.

When he had walked back in ten minutes later, he caught the tail end of Casey's lecture. He didn't need context to understand exactly what the colonel was saying. He was hinting at her blowing the op because she was soft—she let her emotions get in the way of doing what had to be done for the mission. Which wasn't true in the slightest. He knew Casey didn't really believe what he was saying.

But when a man like Edgar Bradley escaped, a man who could have meant bringing more than just one criminal to justice, it had a way of getting under your skin, even if you were a presumably hardened colonel in the NSA.

Now, as he sat beneath the light in the parking lot with Sarah beside him, Chuck attempted to think of something that might rid her conscience of Casey's accusations. Or were they more like observations than accusations?

Chuck and Sarah hadn't been dating long, but he'd known her for years now, long enough to know that she was a chasm of emotion with an almost impenetrable spy mask slid over it. She was full of doubt about so many things, things he couldn't possibly even begin to understand. But Chuck knew she was brimming with confidence when it came to her job. She was the best spy in the world. Hands down. She knew her limitations (if she had any, he thought to himself a bit proudly), and she knew what she was capable of.

That being said, there was something in the way she squinted out at the darkness, her lips pursed, that made Chuck wonder if she wasn't thinking about Casey's insistence that she'd gone soft ever since Operation Bartowski began almost three years ago. Casey hadn't continued because both he and Sarah realized at the same time that Chuck had reentered the conference room. Chuck didn't need to hear what came next. He knew what it would have been. Chuck Bartowski had been the one to make her soft.

He didn't need the Intersect to realize the implications of what Casey was saying. Spending time with Chuck, falling for Chuck, had made Sarah Walker, the CIA's best spy, into less of a spy. As Sarah silently left the room and escaped up the stairs, Chuck felt a spike of annoyance. Repeating in his head that Casey didn't mean it, instead of snapping at him, Chuck patted the colonel's shoulder on his way to grab the Buy More jacket from the chair and follow Sarah outside.

"Sarah?"

"Hm."

He licked his lips. "You're an amazing spy." She frowned a little, still looking down at her lap. "And it's not just that you're amazing, even. You are honestly the best spy in the world."

Sarah dropped her hand on his thigh and squeezed gently. "Thanks."

"No, listen. It isn't that you were the best. You are the best. And no matter how you've changed as a person, that has stayed the same. You're the best." She just shook her head with a small smile and he reached over to grab her hand.

"That's sweet, Chuck, but I've lost my edge." She must have seen it in his eyes, the way he wondered momentarily if she thought falling for him had been the cause of her losing her edge. Because she rushed on, using her free hand to gently tangle her fingers in his shirt collar and get his full attention. "Maybe it is because I fell for you. Maybe it's because you showed me there's something else to life besides being the best spy I can be. Like being the best person I can be. A real person. If that's the case, I don't regret it." For good measure, she kissed him softly, pecking his lips one last time and smiling before pulling back again.

He smiled back, the cold no longer plaguing him as much as it had been. And her hand was still clutched in his shirt and he loved when she did that. "I'm so glad," he breathed. "But…"

"Chuck, it's okay. This happens sometimes. Bad guys get away. We just have to regroup and next time, we'll get him." She ran her other hand up his arm which was covered in goosebumps. God, he rolled his sleeves up to his elbows because he knew Sarah thought it was hot, but it was ironically freezing at the moment.

"We will," he agreed. "I know that. But I'm not backing down from this. Whether Casey believes what he said or not, you are still the best spy in the world, Sarah." She opened her mouth to argue but he forged ahead before she could. "A year ago, Beckman thought you were compromised and sent Agent Forrest…Remember the 49B?"

"I was compromised," she said with a smirk that lit a flame in his chest. "Very compromised." He tried not to let that distract him.

"When Agent Forrest and I infiltrated Westside wearing disguises, a nurse caught us coming out of the room together where we'd changed. She thought we were hooking up and teased us. She was probably a perfectly nice lady! But without thinking twice, before I could blink even, Forrest buried two tranq darts in the woman's chest. And we had to drag her off to hide her body in a closet. Like it was nothing." Sarah's hand was so warm on his arm as she squeezed in a reassuring manner. "And I remember thinking, Sarah, I remember thinking that you wouldn't have done that. I thought of how you would have handled the situation differently. Instead of immediately shooting her with tranquilizers, you would have teased her back and talked around it. Or you would have blushed and giggled, or…something…anything. Anything so that you didn't have to hurt her."

Sarah's blue eyes were so startlingly beautiful in every light, but at the moment they also seemed to shimmer a little, even though the smile had died on her face, replaced instead by breathlessness, parted lips and flared nostrils.

"That is what makes you a better spy than any other spy I've ever met. That is what makes you the best, Sarah Walker. The fact that you ensure the safety of not just the Intersect, not just you and your team…you look out for the innocent people, too."

He reached up to cup her face, his heart racing when her eyelids fluttered and she melted into his touch. Then she met his gaze steadily again as he delivered the final blow.

"I've known you for almost three years and in that time I have never seen you take the easy way out like Agent Forrest did. Not if it meant hurting an innocent person. You use your…incredibly abundant intelligence, your wits and your charm, to get out of a sticky situation. That's the mark of the best kind of spy there is. A spy with a conscience. A spy who cares about people." He looked off to the side for a moment. "You know, maybe the CIA doesn't agree with me. Maybe Casey doesn't agree with me. And maybe—maybe even you don't agree with me. But being a spy with feelings doesn't mean you're weak. It means you're human. And there isn't anything in the world that can make me think that's a bad thing."

He shrugged and looked back at her. Chuck thought for a moment she might cry, the way her pupils seemed to shiver, her lip clamped between her teeth, and then she just grinned, lighting up the entire parking lot.

And then his face was framed by her hands and she was kissing him tenderly. What felt like minutes later, she pulled her lips away but kept her forehead pressed against his. "God, you make me feel crazy," she breathed, rounding his shoulders with her arms and hugging him tightly, her nose nuzzling his neck.

He squeezed her tightly. "Sorry."

She giggled. "I'm not sure it's a bad thing. And for the record, while I'm sure the CIA wouldn't agree with your assessment about what makes the best kind of spy," she pulled back to meet his brown eyes with her blue ones, "you sure as hell made a believer out of me."

He grinned. "Good."

"Mmhmm."

They kissed again for a few moments, then pulled back. "Kay, so it's freezing," Sarah said immediately.

"It is so cold!"

She laughed and hopped off the hood of her car, then fished her car keys out of her bag. As she made to walk to the driver's side of the Porsche, Chuck bit his lip, pondering for just a moment, before he reached out and stopped her by gently wrapping his fingers around her wrist. She turned back to him with raised eyebrows, questioning, and he slid off of the hood to stand close to her.

"Stay with me tonight." She didn't respond for a second. "Don't go back to your hotel."

Sarah's shoulders rose and lowered again as she took a deep breath, her eyes suddenly sparkling. "Okay."

Chuck couldn't help grinning. "Can I drive your car?"

"No."

"Awww, come on!"

"I already let you sit on it!" she argued, causing him to laugh as he walked around to the passenger side.

They each opened their respective doors and looked over the roof at each other, Chuck feeling the warmth practically rolling back and forth between them in strong waves. "Someday I'll talk you into it, Walker."

"Mmm, my silver tongued nerd. Get in the car."

A/N: Hope you liked it! I'd love to hear what you guys thought about it.

And thank you for reading!