Chuck vs the iPhone.

-o0o-

Why me?

It's not fair!

How can this happen to me?

Who is to blame?

2. Anger

So, how to find out his new cell number? Chuck wondered. 'I'm a professional nerd. This shouldn't be a problem,' he thought. Chuck opened the panel, and after taking it out, looked at the micro SIM. It was blank.

Someone, probably the CIA, had removed the number.

It actually took Chuck until Friday afternoon to discover that his new cell number was listed in the 'contacts' of his phone. Right up there, at the top. In plain sight, all the time. Disturbingly obvious, once you've found it. There was absolutely no way he was telling anyone how long it'd taken him to find that part of the screen.

He'd found his own number by cheating. He sent a text to Morgan since he knew that number, and off of Morgan's phone, he found his own, new number. After that, it was relatively easy.

He trotted across the lot, over to the Wienerlicious, where he found Sarah, contemplating a deep fryer rack of still frozen, and thus by definition, un-Sarahfied-crispy-crittered. "Haven't those poor things suffered enough?" he asked, indicating the fryer basket with a sardonic grin.

Happiness to see him battled with a hot burst of rage at being mocked over her (non-existent, she admitted, but still….) cooking skills. Concern eventually won. Chuck almost never came over this early in the day.

"Chuck? What's wrong? Did you," she double checked with a glance from side to side, that there was no one else around, and her voice dipped to a whisper, "flash?"

"Nah, nothing like that. Um…. Sarah? What's your cell number?"

She looked at him, puzzled, since she knew Chuck was well aware of her number. She even got as far as shaping her lips to begin chanting off her normal cell number. And then, she realized…..

Her eyes shot wide open. They'd been given new cells….. "We, we have new numbers… don't we?"

"Uh huh. And I don't think we were told our new ones. Unless Casey has some paperwork he forgot about. So, wanna know your new number?"

She leant over the counter, and dragged her new iPhone out from somewhere behind her, out of sight, and yet still on or about her person. She bobbed the phone between thumb and fore finger, so he could take it, and said with a smirk, "Okay, mister phone fixer. Show me."

Chuck took the phone, but was slightly distracted for a moment. The iPhone was still warm from where ever she'd hidden it. Which was probably next to her knives, Glock and poison darts. The image of a holster, with all these shiny items sprang unbidden into his mind. Only in Chuck's version, the holster was actually a lacy garter, clinging around a firm, long, smooth thigh…..

Chuck blinked the image away, only to find what was quite possibly the finest cleavage in recorded history, roughly two feet away. Chuck blinked again, and mentally slapped his own face in order to rouse himself from the slack jawed stupor he was beginning to suspect he might just possibly be afflicted by.

"I, um, I, um…. Right!" he cleared his throat, "Okay, well, we send a message to a phone whose number we do know…." Chuck slid his thumb across her screen, and the phone screen opened up. "Oh, um, Sarah, you don't have a PIN number?"

"There's a what now?" she asked.

"You know, to unlock the phone, so no one else can use it. Or look at CIA secrets. Thought you were more paranoid than that." He tilted his head, and clarified by waggled the phone, "this."

She straightened up and looking steadily at him, she said seriously, "If anybody whose fingerprints are not in the onboard system, touches it, the C4 blows."

Chuck fumbled the phone slightly two or five times, and recovered it in suddenly sweaty fingers. He looked at her, "C4, really?" he squeaked.

"No, of course not, you idiot," she tried to resist rolling her eyes at him. "Generally speaking, it's a bad idea to keep sensitive information on a portable transmitter," she paused to look at her fake boyfriend, and thought about what her previous boyfriend had done to this man, "As you are probably already aware. Plus, I may need to call for backup straight away. My having to stop and type in a PIN could cost lives."

Chuck held her gaze for a moment, before saying, "You know, for most people, that's just an expression."

"Lucky for you, I'm not most people," she said, as she gave him a mock curtsy.

"That, you most certainly are not, Miss Walker," his lips twitched to one side, in an amused shape. "Okay, phone. We send a mess-aaaaa-ge…." he dragged out, while he fished a scrap of paper out of his top pocket. Looking at the number scrawled on the scrap, he started thumb typing on her phone, "…. to my phone. There. Annnnnd…." His own phone went 'ding' from is pocket. Fishing that out, he concluded, "…. we thus have your number in my phone. I reply, annnnnnd…" her phone dinged, "that's that," he concluded with a satisfied smile. "Save that number and Bob's your uncle."

-o0o-

Casey started his late shift in a bad mood. Nobody actually noticed. Not because the big man was a good actor, capable of keeping his emotions hidden. Nobody noticed, because he normally seemed to be in a bad mood, so no-one noticed anything different.

When Casey said Chuck's name, several staff thought it was Big Mike barking out 'Bartowski!' Even Chuck, who had watched Casey bark his name, flicked his head to look at Big Mike's office, just to double check.

"Um…." Chuck checked his watch, to buy himself some time to think. "… Morning there, John. Help you with something?"

Casey really should see someone about that vein, or artery, pulsing in the middle of his forehead at some stage, thought Chuck. And the chords standing out on his neck made him look a little like that bad guy Hulk in the new Ed Norton version. Casey continued his hot glare at Chuck for a few more throbbing pulsations of that forehead vein, or artery.

"How the….. far….Kurnell," Casey strangled out, coincidentally naming a small town on the placid shores of Botany Bay, "do you use this," Casey held his iPhone in a meaty paw. Chuck felt sure that squeezing it that hard would void the warranty. Even an NSA warranty. ".… thing?"

"Can't be that hard," said Chuck. "I mean, Jeff has one," Chuck waved he hand toward the rear of the store, indicating the staff facilities, including the disabled stall of the boys room.

Chuck now found an iPhone case now pressed painfully up against the base of his nose. "You don't know how to use it?" was menaced toward the man being held at iPhone point.

"Um, not yet. I've had mine for just as long as you've had yours, right?"

"You're a geek. You're supposed to know all this stuff."

"Um, its nerd," Chuck mumbled, "and I'm more your Windows sort of…. You know what? I'll look into it, see what I can find, right? We'd have to have a 'how-to' manual or something lying around."

The pressure eased off Chuck's top lip and or base of nose region.

Chuck wondered if it was lunch time yet. So he could go over and be protected by his kick-ass ninja, CIA assigned protector. He checked his watch, and then realized he'd just done that only slightly before Casey had tried to fit an iPhone up one (or slightly disturbingly, both) of his nostrils.

Sadly, Chuck had over an hour till he could go see Sarah. He headed back behind the Nerd Herd desk, to see if there were any manuals or user hints he could liberate, and thus save the day.

"Charles, what are you doing?" asked Lester, in that manner of his, the one that made you want to take a shower. A shower using bleach. And a Brillo pad.

"Hi, Lester. I just got myself a new iPhone. I was just wanting to…."

"Standard rates, Bartowski. Like everyone else."

Chuck said, incredulously, "Lester, I work here."

"And yet," Lester intimated, "you did not purchase said Apple product from this very boutique. Thus…" Lester spread his hands, to indicate his hands were tied, metaphorically, in this matter, "….standard rates, Bartowski." Lester folded his arms, "Like everybody else."

-o0o-

Normally, when Chuck went to see Sarah, she greeted him with a huge, and he felt, genuine, smile.

Not this time. From the way her knuckles whitened as she gripped the fryer basket, Chuck began to worry. He'd seen her accuracy with thrown items.

"Um, Sarah, you…. you okay?"

Sarah carefully replaced the hot oil dripping fryer cage into the drip rack, and wished momentarily for a nicely balanced chefs knife. Something with a bit of heft to it.

"Chuck…" she told the wall, "… this is not a good time."

"Sarah? What's wrong?"

The look on her face, as she whipped around to glare him, made him take a step backwards. And maybe a teeny tiny part of his brain contemplated running, screaming, back over to the Buy More.

"Sarah, you're frightening the Intersect," he said in what he hoped was a reasonable tone.

"All I want to do," her eyes flashed anger, "is call my boyfriend. But naouuuu," she dragged out, sarcastically. "This …. This stupid….." she was holding the phone in a manner that reminded Chuck somewhat of Casey, and his attempt at nasal exploration a while back, "fff….phone," she growled between gritted teeth, "won't let me do that."

Chuck was suddenly reminded of one of those rom com videos that Ellie loved, and he and Devon had learned to sit quietly through. There was a scene in one of them, where the guy pissed his girlfriend-of-convenience totally off. And when the female lead had glared furiously at the male lead, the same way Sarah was glaring at him right now, the hero then went and opened his fool trap, and told her that she was cute when she was mad. The ensuing verbal barrage was hilarious and one of the highlights of the world of romantic comedies.

Chuck kept his mouth firmly shut. Sarah did not look cute. She looked like flaming death. She looked like angry flaming death. All she needed was The Ride Of The Valkyries playing at full volume.

Scratch that. Sarah didn't need any help to be scary. After a few minutes of Sarah loudly nose breathing, Chuck pointed over his shoulder, back over to the Buy More, and he mumbled, "I've been trying to get the ….." he trailed off.

"I'll keep trying," he said as he bravely turned his tail, fled, and gallantly, he chickened out.

-o0o-

Today was one of those niggling days when the universe seems to go out of its way to annoy him, just for its own amusement. Chuck rather felt that that seemed to have happened a lot, during the last year or so.

The customers seem to space their timing perfectly so that Chuck wasn't able to look anything up on the service desktop. Every time he got to the computer, a customer came along with time wasting questions. And when he got back to the computer, it had timed out, and he needed to log back on.

And then another customer stood in front of him, wanting to know the difference between wi fi and wireless.

Jeff and Lester ran a tag team to protect the precious manuals. At one stage during the afternoon, when Chuck thought Jeff was sleeping at the desk, and Lester was out on a call, Chuck actually got a finger onto the spine. And then Jeff's eyes opened, and he slurred, "Don't even think about it, Bartowski."

In the afternoon, Casey interrupted Chuck's attempts at research. "Anything yet, moron?" Casey asked after enticing Chuck to leave the safety of the Herd desk, by grabbing his (Chuck's) collar and hauling him (still Chuck) over to the appliances section of the store.

"No! And there won't be if you keep inter…..urk."

"Bartowski? Just because Walker's got her panties in a bunch, doesn't mean you get to threaten anybody. Leave these things to people who know what they're doing." Said Casey in a scarily reasonable tone. Despite the paw around the neck of a nerd.

"Now, go find out how to use this… two bit…. four flushing….. dirty….. rotten….. thing!" This time the reasonable part of his tone was absent. The scary part was still front and centre.

-o0o-