Truthfully, he liked the taste of Johnnie Walker Black now.
For a few years after Stanford it had been Johnnie Walker Red, mostly because he was listening a lot to that Elliott Smith song, "Miss Misery," from the end of Good Will Hunting, and that song seemed to suggest that the Red Label version was pretty good for drowning your sorrows. In the few times he had it since Manoosh, and with Beckman assigning Shaw and Sarah to D.C. and leaving him in Burbank, he realized that he likes Black much, much better. The dark amber liquid is smooth as it goes down, and the bitter taste balanced by a surprising sweetness. It feels bad and good at the same time, like his entire relationship with Sarah, and the similarities caused him to slam the glass down on the coffee table.
He was stupid drunk. He knew he was. He had never been drunk off of Black, before. It was different than when he gets a good champagne or beer buzz going. With those lighter alcohols it seemed like the drunkenness-- and, if he was trying to drink away any emotional pain, that too-- would spread across his entire body, diffusing itself across his various limbs. His legs and arms would be sluggish, and if he attempted to wiggle his fingers they would respond, but slowly and awkwardly and not quite how he wanted. The pain wouldn't hurt as much, either. It kind of worked on the same principle as pinching yourself in the arm to temporarily relieve a headache; if the pain was spread over a larger area of your body, then all of it felt a little less painful.
The Black, though, sharpened his drunkenness-- and, again, his pain-- into an impossibly sharp point. Threading it down from a bruise that filled his head to the end of a needle, stationed at the back left of his brain stem. He still slurred his words, he noticed as he spoke experimentally, trying and failing to smile as he couldn't recognize the words in his ears even as his brain forced them out of his mouth. But his limbs didn't feel their usual laboriousness as he flexed his fingers and found them responding. Yes, the pain hurt even more, focused down to that single point, but it could be pushed aside, ignored more easily because it had become more small.
He mentioned his new preference for Black once to Casey, who had replied with Grunt #21, Satisfied and Agreeing.
He picked up the guitar controller with purpose, turning on the XBox. Music itself was too passive at the moment, even if it had been something loud and pounding, he needed something visceral and tactile to work with. Flicking through the song list he settled on something incredibly self-inflicting; Weezer's "Why Bother?" He hadn't loved Pinkerton when it had come out, angry and sad and kind of about Japanese teenagers, but it had become a staple rotation after Jill. Throwing the track on expert, his fingers danced around the buttons and he mumbled the chorus lines to himself.
As the song progressed, he noticed the fine point in his head obnoxiously spreading. His fingers moved with less precision, and before long that point had spread throughout his entire body, everything becoming a distant crawl. His fingers felt heavy and, unlike the buzz from beer or champagne, the pain wasn't diffused at all. Instead, the intensity of that focused point remained, but spread throughout him. He barely noticed when he failed the song, or moving back to the main menu. He sat down, and cursed himself for thinking that his admittance of love meant anything to Sarah.
She hadn't said the same to him.
He had never asked.
He was afraid of the answer. He had always been afraid of the answer. Sometimes he took it for granted. In the movies, the guy made his move and the girl reciprocated. That was just how it worked. Other times he was just convinced of it, like that morning in Barstow, and the night of his sister's rehersal dinner. And still other times he was convinced he had imagined it, like much of the past year, ever since he had seen her again after Prague. Ellie told him that he could never go too far getting Sarah back, but he had gone as far as he could and she was still leaving. He rested the glass-- it felt cool and brutally scorching simultaneously-- against his head, his eyes drooping.
They perked up only marginally when Morgan opened the door, his friend's smile more frustrating and less a balm than it usually was.
"Hey hey hey," Morgan said, "Got some very exciting news for you. Hold onto your hat. I did it."
He couldn't bring himself to even lift his head in Morgan's direction.
"What the heck is goin' on here?" Morgan demanded.
Finally, he brought his head to look at his bearded friend, his eyes a bit glassy and unfocused. The all-encompassing sluggishness drowning him a bit. Morgan set his backpack down, glancing from him, down to the bottle of Johnnie Walker Black, back to the TV and then back to himself.
"Oh," Morgan said sadly, but unsurprised, "Are you mixing gaming with whiskey?"
He wanted to correct him. Black Label wasn't just any whiskey. But he didn't think that would hardly help him to look like anything less than completely pathetic at the moment. He wanted a soothing balm right now. John Hughes. Pretty In Pink. Something. Not reprimands.
"She's leavin', man," He managed to slur, his voice too deep to crack. It was the only thing focused in reality that he could concentrate on. The inextricable truth that she was leaving. He had played every card he had and she was still leaving, "Leavin' with the other guy."
He shrugged the guitar over his shoulder as Morgan spat platitudes, "No, this cannot happen." He didn't want to hear it. He took another sip of his drink, "This cannot happen."
He was curious to find the bottom of his glass again. That wasn't supposed to be there. There was supposed to be more whiskey. "I thought I stood a chance, man," He said, reaching to pour himself another glass.
"Yeah, I know, but-" Morgan suddenly noticed him reaching for it and put his own hands on it. Why were Morgan's hands there? That didn't make any sense. There were just supposed to be his hands on it, so he could pour himself more.
"No, no, no, no, no," his friend muttered. He looked up at Morgan's face, moving too quickly to get a proper read on. Why was he doing this? The Black, it focused the pain so he could deal with it. He needed to be able to deal with it right now. He pulled on it curiously, normally more than enough to wrench the bottle away from Morgan, but his friend was insistent. He grinned feral, placing another hand on the bottle, a back and forth that he normally would have been able to win easily, but the alcohol had deadened his senses and his strength. Morgan wrenched him to his feet through the bottle.
"Le'go," He tried to command.
"No," Morgan infuriatingly stood his ground, "You're on the precipice of emotional ruin here!"
The precipice? "I'm already over the edge!" He asserted.
"No, you're not," Morgan argued, the argument itself angering him even more than the lack of booze, "Soon you're going to start quoting liberally from the works of John Hughes," He narrowed his eyes. Was he really that predictable? Probably. Another reason she would be leaving, "And then things are gonna go dark. Things are gonna do really dark. And I'm not gonna let that happen!"
His friend's speech probably would have helped in another situation. Another lifetime. Before Shaw. Before Carmichael. Before Sarah. Now it was just another obstacle between him and dulled pain, "Morgan. Hand over the bottle," He demanded.
"Never!" His friend fought, harder than he thought the little man could try at anything other than Call of Duty and finally twisted the bottle from his grasp.
The flash, details and schematics and techniques on how to tie someone up for interrogation, almost seemed to have a personification of their own, the bits and pieces and images floating by with a giddy, vengeful glee. He repressed a disconcerting smile just barely, "Yes, you will," He said, perfectly factual.
"Make me," His friend said defiantly.
This time he did grin.
Truthfully, he liked the taste Johnnie Walker Black now. But it was missing something.
Mint ice cream, maybe?
She walked through his Echo Park apartment complex, grateful that neither Ellie nor Awesome were around to confront her. There would be questions about Chuck if they had been, and she wasn't entirely comfortable with questions in general, but almost completely uncomfortable with questions about Chuck. They were-- there was that word again, the one that both explained their situation perfectly and refused to explain anything-- complicated.
Her life with her father had been complicated, and she kind of loved her job in the CIA for making her life so uncomplicated. Training had been uncomplicated. Missions had been uncomplicated. Relationships had been uncomplicated. What you needed to do was spelled out for you in no uncertain terms in all three of those situations. They were easy, and a welcome respite from her life before. Even though Sarah Walker wasn't her real name she had had it for so long that it might as well have been. It was the person who she had grown into and become. Bryce had been uncomplicated and she had been grateful for it. He was a boy-- an attractive, deadly, efficient and warm boy-- who liked her. That was all she needed to know. She liked how he kissed her (among other things) and on their vacation in Cabo she couldn't have thought of anything so wonderfully uncomplicated.
Then he sent Chuck the Intersect and "died." And things became complicated again. First she was protecting someone who she had suddenly found herself connecting with in a way she had never experienced before. And it was in direct and unwavering contrast with the wonderfully uncomplicated rules that had dictated her life to that moment. Not only was the situation complicated, but Chuck was complicated. Simultaneously cowed and brave, crushed and hopeful, he was the most open enigma she could find. He'd push and push and push and then, for no discernible reason, back away. And she'd rebuff and rebuff and rebuff and then, for no discernible reason, give in.
For a moment, nine months ago, she thought she could have it both ways. She could keep the simplicity, the uncomplicated nature that she so preferred, and keep Chuck. But he confounded her again. She asked him to run. It would be simple. It would be her and him, sure with different names and a different life, but it would just be the two of them together. And that would be enough.
But it wasn't.
He had uploaded the Intersect again and he wanted the complications. Where the CIA had pulled straight the tangled web of her life, it would weave new strings into the fabric of his, making spiderwebs out of straight lines. The straight lines had been hard enough to understand for her, she thought that spiderwebs would have been impossible.
She realized, almost immediately after Casey told her the truth about Chuck's Red Test, that she had been viewing his progress into that world through the lens of her own entrance. She saw how it had changed how she had been before into who she was now. It was a good change for her. Looking back at her complicated life before the CIA, she was glad it had entered her life. But Chuck, he had been enough for anyone-- certainly more than enough for her-- before this. He didn't need any changing. So with each tooth pulled and lie told, she thought how much it had changed her and she assumed-- and maybe unfairly-- that it would be the same for him, not taking care to notice the corners of his eyelids crinkle in distaste or a section of his lip frown through his facade. But as soon as Casey told her, it was like taking off a pair of sunglasses. Not only did the world seem brighter, but clearer.
She knew he would be crushed that she had run off with Shaw when she was supposed to be running away with him, after he had admitted cold and without pride or agenda that he loved her (her heart swelled at the thought now). But she never would have been able to run with Shaw having seen her. Especially not with something as large as the Ring Director. So she pushed off their escape one more time, trying and trying to get a signal to Chuck. First by phone, then by expression. Then by, "I appreciated the tank." She had. She had weird ideas of romance, maybe, but someone sending stealth bombers and a tank after you was fairly adorable (and quintessentially the new Chuck, which was she knew now the old Chuck but with, well, tanks). She knew that Beckman had benched him, but with Shaw having another read on the Ring Director, and the pair of them definitely needing a third, she knew Shaw could convince the General to have Chuck come along. She wanted Chuck to come along.
She opened the door to his apartment, smiling slightly at the image of Guitar Hero on the screen and that one 80s song from some movie playing in the background, only for it to turn into a shocked expression as she looked around and saw Morgan tied up in video game cords on the floor and Chuck, holding a plastic guitar and in his underwear, splayed out near him on the kitchen wall, a conspicuously half-drunk bottle of whiskey next to him.
"What is happening?" She asks, confused.
"Hey, Sarah," It's Morgan who responds and she's slightly surprised that he isn't gagged. Chuck's head shoots towards her but she's more concerned with getting Morgan untied, "Chuck's in a... a bit of a low spot," the bearded BuyMorian says from his prone position.
"Um," She looks at him, and his face attempts about fourteen different expressions at once, settling on a confused, embarrassed, and pained half-smile, "Yeah, yeah, I see that."
"He found out that you're leaving with Shaw," Morgan explains and it's only through practice that her heart doesn't stop. He alway seems to find out the important things in the worst ways, "He's also eaten an entire carton of mint ice cream," She can't look at him at the moment, so she instead unsheathes her knife, "Which is only concerning-- Well-- when you factor in the," She cuts Morgan loose, "Large consumption of whiskey," She only just keeps herself from hanging her head, biting her lip, running to hug Chuck, or just slapping her palm to her face.
She looks at Chuck with a mixture of confusion and shock, "Morgan, can you leave us, please?"
His friend, normally obstinate from agreeing to such requests, seems glad to be away from Chuck, "I forgive you," he states as he stomps off. And she's too worried about Chuck to smile when Morgan unnecessarily adds, "Great, now I hate this song!" before ripping it violently from the record player.
She looks down at Chuck, who looks up at her both imploring and defensive, "Look, I, uh," She chooses to sit down next to him, so he doesn't feel like he's being reprimanded or looked down at. She just wants to know (She's always just wanted to know and it seems like it should be easy with how much he wants to talk about it, but it never is) what's going on in his head. As she does so he grabs the bottle of Johnnie Walker Black protectively and she feels a slight urge to yell at Casey for ever giving him the idea, "I know what I look like," He says and she want to tell him that he just looks like (will always look like) Chuck to her, but can't get the words out.
It's always been a problem for her, getting the words out.
"The mint ice cream sobered me up pretty good," He adds, and it's such a Chuck moment that she has to smile, despite the gravity of the situation.
"Look, it's okay," She says consolingly, trying to give him a bigger smile, because she had a night or two just as inebriated, alone in her hotel room, after he had left.
"No," He disagrees, "It isn't." And he says it so seriously that she can't add anything. He seems defeated, and that seems so inappropriate to her, with her heart so filled with each thought of He loves me, he loves me, he loves me. But he turns his eyes on her, and she want to know (She just wants to know) what he's thinking.
"I thought I could save you," He says simply, "I thought Shaw was bad and I was gonna save you and we were gonna be--" He hesitates only slightly but she still notices it, "Together."
He looks at her helplessly, "But that didn't happen."
She knows that he thinks that the only way now, after seeing her embrace Shaw helplessly at the warehouse, for them to be together would be for Shaw to be bad. And she wants to correct him, wants to tell him that it's not true, but she doesn't know how, doesn't know how to get the words out. It's too complicated an emotion to express for her, and she just wants an uncomplicated way to say it. A way that doesn't sound too convoluted.
She can only answer with something safe, and she kind of wants to kick herself after she says it, "Shaw's a good spy."
He looks like his heart breaks when she says it, and she bites back on an addendum, that she doesn't mean that Chuck isn't (he is) or that she prefers Shaw to him (she doesn't), but she has never known how to talk to him when he looks like that.
"I get it, okay?" He says, painfully, gesturing pointlessly with his hands and, for the first time, she smells the whiskey on his breath. It's faint in the background and she knows he isn't drunk at this point, but she still smells it and it still makes her sad, "Everybody gets it. Shaw's amazing," He says it condescendingly, though she knows Chuck respects Daniel, and it's in her nature to defend people but she bites back again. Another defense of Shaw isn't what Chuck needs right now, "And you two are gonna go run off together," She avoids contact with his eyes because she doesn't know how to tell him that he's wrong. She's never known how to tell him that he's wrong, "And save the world and that's," He sighs, like Atlas, "Great news for the world." She hears it in his tone, the addition to that sentence, "But terrible news for me." And she wishes she had the strength to meet his gaze.
"And earlier on, in my," He continues, and just as she finds a way to look at him, he himself looks away and she thinks they've been playing that exact game forever, "Drunken haze," He admits, abashed, catching her eyes again "I realized that I hadn't asked you," He hesitates for a moment, looking down and then looking up again, "A question," He says simply, shrugging, though she knows with Chuck it's never simple or uncomplicated and that has always made her uncomfortable, "A really important question," He adds, and she thinks she doesn't know what he's going to ask, though she probably does, "That I'd like to ask you now, if that's okay?" He asks, and she remembers somewhere in the back of her subconscious that he asked if it was okay if he kissed her the other day after saying he loved her (He loved her) but the memory never reaches her face. She's mostly afraid of how damn complicated this is (has always been) and her heart beats erratically and her stomach muscles clench, "Just once, for the record," He adds, and the anticipation is making her lips tingle.
He pauses a long time then, and she sees him gather the courage to go through. He's always gathered the courage to go through, and if there's one thing that she's forever proud of him for, it's that.
"Sarah, do you love me?"
Her breath catches for a moment, and she thinks she dies for just a second. She's frozen, like a deer in headlights for a painful moment that she fights through. Finally, she feels her face move, feels the answer at the back of her throat, but a deepening fear of everything, of being hurt, of things getting too complicated and difficult, hits her suddenly and her eyes can't stay in one spot and her tongue is glued to the bottom of her mouth. She knows he doesn't deserve this silence and she knows it should be a simple answer, but everything has always been so complicated that simple feels unintuitive now and she wants to explain about every time she's ever known she's loved him and felt her heart explode and then implode (and he's the only reason she knows the word 'implode') for him all at once.
He breaks eye contact, and she knows he's afraid of the answer, and he simply exclaims, "Wow," and it breaks her concentration. He'd always been able to gather the courage to go through. And it's always taken her a moment too long, and again she feels like this has been their entire relationship forever and ever, "I'm, uh... I'm in my underwear!" She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, and she kind of hears him say it, but more she just hears the question (Do you love me do you love me do you love me?) over and over again, "I'm sitting in my underwear, holding a plastic guitar. There's a very good chance I'm making a complete fool of myself, isn't there?"
And she registers the sound of his voice. Of Chuck's voice and she remembers ballerinas and bombs and first dates and second first dates and weddings and parties and missions and other men (Bryce, Cole, Shaw) and other women (Lou, Jill, Hannah) and bombs that weren't bombs but led to kisses and Christmas bracelets and stakeout mixes and sizzling shrimp and her father and his father and him always wanting to save everyone and Barstow (and Barstow) and she finally looks at him, tears in her eyes, and says, "Yes."
"Just let me put some pants on," He says, smiling sadly and she realizes what he just said before her answer.
"No, Chuck..." She says forcefully, doing everything but grabbing his face to bring it back to her own, and she feels the lump catch in her throat and she looks at him, and she wants everything in her face to communicate exactly what she means when she says, "Yes."
His look is disbelief at first. And she can see him running the scenarios through his head (A dream, a delusion, a hallucination, how much alcohol did I drink, this is an autonomous Sarah robot built to say whatever I want to hear, or I just heard her wrong) as his gaze loosens and he says, "Wha... Uh, what?"
"Chuck," She says patiently, passionately, "I fell for you a long, long time ago," And it's the truth, the pure and unadulterated truth and it's simple and uncomplicated just as the truth should be and she can't believe that it can be that way because telling the truth has always been complicated for her and how can it be so simple and pure and right now? "After you fixed my phone and before you started diffusing bombs with computer viruses," Somewhere between, 'I can be' and 'Your very own baggage handler,' the phrase that had caught her more off guard than anything in her entire career as a spy, something that had her fighting to keep the widest grin off her face and to force her heart rate back down even though she shouldn't have been feeling that way (Bryce, traitor as he was, had just died). "So, yes." And she laughs because, he was right, it felt so good to say, and she had to say it once more, "Yes."
His smile is slow, as if he's expecting to be woken up at any moment and, as it blooms, she can't help herself any more and she goes to him (it's the third time she's gone to him and they're the only times she's gone to anybody-- even Bryce initiated all of their kisses) this time without any sort of fear or worry or doubt. (He loves her. She loves him. Simple. Uncomplicated) And she kisses him.
He tastes a bit like whiskey and a lot like mint ice cream, so he reminds her a bit of that drink called a Grasshopper, though she may be confusing it, as it's been years (since college training) since she's actually had a Grasshopper, but she thinks it's appropriate that he tastes like a sweet, lovable alcoholic beverage; he's always been intoxicating to her. She breaks away only slightly, looking at him in that moment and trying to say everything she's never said (I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry) in her eyes and her actions, and she kisses him once, twice, three times more. (I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry).
Finally he brings his own hands up to her face, where hers have been on his since the first kiss, and joins her. A long, passionate kiss that she wants ad infinitum but only gets for a second, maybe two, before he breaks away.
"Wait, wait," He says and she doesn't understand for a moment, and her heart breaks. Wait? Why wait? Why ever wait? And she fears the complications slipping back in before he asks something so simple she wants to laugh, "What about my Red Test?"
She shakes her head, trying to get it all out somehow in one word, so she can just go back to being with him, "Casey told me," She spits hurriedly, "He told me that he killed the mole and that you couldn't do it and it was the best news that I'd ever heard because," She remembers she has to breathe to talk more, gulps the air in hurriedly, "It means that you haven't changed, you're still Chuck," Because that one syllable has come to mean so much to her. And as complicated and difficult as it has been to wrap her tongue around sometimes, now with everything out in the open, it's been so worth it.
He smiles. But it's still uncertain, as if maybe he's dreaming it.
"You're still my Chuck," She says, and it sounds foreign coming out of her, and it's not a simple or uncomplicated feeling, but maybe-- she suddenly reconsiders as his real smile, wide and open and honest and bright eyes and lots of perfect, white teeth-- maybe that is what has made every moment worthwhile. He smiles the smile that she's come to associate with so much of what he is and what he has always represented to her, and she can't hold back her own.
He loves her. She loves him.
It's both simple and not. Both complicated and un. It's a million different things at once and just exactly what it is.
Truthfully, he liked the taste Johnnie Walker Black now. But he didn't think he'd need it much now.
He had her.
And she had always been intoxicating.