A/N: I wasn't going to post this today and then I realized Thanksgiving is still next week and there's three chapters (including this one) of this story I have to put up. Eeeeep! So here it is. Thanks for all of the really great reviews, seriously. You guys are wonderful. Did everybody go read the brilliant ending to Chuck vs. the Sound of Music first? If you didn't, go do that now, this one will wait! Thanks to my pre-readers and to my readers and to the person who invented Dr Pepper and to my mom and to my dad and to my sister and my brother and my other sister and to the person who taught me how to dance (nobody) and to my cousin Maggie for being the inspiration for one Violet Bartowski.
Marilyn Monroe eloped with Joe DiMaggio at San Francisco City Hall on January 14, 1954. She filed for divorce on grounds of mental cruelty nine months after the wedding.
The Running Man and Marilyn Monroe
"Wait, pull over, pull over." Chuck leaned forward in excitement, practically straining against the seatbelt as he tried to get a better look at whatever was happening on Sarah's side of the car.
Sarah eyed the throng of people in the warehouse parking lot, but shrugged. None of them look exceedingly dangerous. "What do you think it is?"
"I don't know, but I just saw a drag queen dressed up as Marilyn Monroe, and that's more than enough reason to stop." Chuck pulled off his seatbelt and climbed out of the car. "It just seems like a big gathering of awesome."
Sarah wasn't so sure about that; the warehouse looked a bit worn and used, but not quite to the point of breaking down. The parking lot was in better shape than the one up by El Camino Sucio, at least. There were cars of all types—from Mercedes to Gremlins—parked randomly throughout, and a crowd of people in bright clothing gathered by the open double-doors of the warehouse. When she opened her car door, Sarah was assaulted with the far-off thrum of techno music.
"What on earth?" she asked, looking around.
Chuck crouched and picked up a yellow piece of paper floating by. "Wow," he said, rising to his full height. "It's a Techno Turkey Day party."
"What?"
The flyer showed a turkey—in a dress—getting it on while a DJ spun beats a turntable behind it. "TECHNO TURKEY DAY" was scrawled across the top in red letters, followed by the address, and "WE'LL GO UNTIL THE FIRE MARSHAL SHUTS US DOWN."
"It's a...Thanksgiving dance party?" Sarah asked, mystified.
Chuck's grin practically split his face in two. "This day just gets better and better! C'mon, I want to see inside."
"Are you sure—"
Chuck grabbed her arm once again, giving her no choice but to come along. Some small part of her had to enjoy the irony; after all, Chuck had been the one on their faux-date that had been anti-dance, and now he was hauling her towards a party where there would be nothing but dancing and techno music. Techno music, Sarah noted, that grew louder the nearer they drew to the building.
"Hey there!" Marilyn Monroe—and her prominent Adam's apple—met them at the door. "Cover?"
Chuck was already digging for his wallet. "How much?"
"Five a piece, twenty if you want the gold bands." Marilyn held up a handful of gold and silver bracelets.
"What do the gold bands get us?"
"Keg privileges, darling. My, you're a tall one."
Marilyn beamed up at Chuck. Sarah didn't even feel the customary stab of jealousy that had to be suppressed, given the way Chuck was squirming under the drag queen's appreciative gaze.
She stepped in to save her cover boyfriend. "We'll take the gold ones."
"Mm-hmm." Marilyn gave her the same appreciative look she'd given Chuck, and Sarah had to fight the urge to laugh. "Keg's in the corner, my man Joe will hook you up."
"Not in the Miller phase of your life, huh?" Chuck asked, looking at the iconic white dress.
"Arthur's a fine, a fine writer, but today is all about passion. Y'all enjoy yourselves now." Marilyn gave them the gold bands and a wink and sent them inside, where the music grew so loud, Sarah could feel her bones vibrate.
"Well, you heard the man—woman—Marilyn!" Chuck had to shout so that she could hear him. "Let's enjoy ourselves! Drink?"
"Please," Sarah said. She grabbed Chuck's hand so they wouldn't lose each other in the mass of people. It seemed that everybody who wasn't playing tourist or enjoying turkey had come to the Techno Turkey Day Party, as the warehouse—which looked like it had been more of a storage facility than anything else—was packed to the girders with people, all jumping and writhing to the music. Lawn furniture had been brought in for places to sit, and those were covered with people, too. Usually people sitting in other people's laps, she noted, and much more than that. They passed quite a few couples well on their way to breaking several public indecency laws. Each time, Chuck coughed into the back of his hand, obviously uncomfortable.
Joe DiMaggio, in a crisp uniform, was indeed manning the kegs in the back corner. Sarah and Chuck were brought up short by one thing, though.
"Is that..." Sarah asked.
"He's Marilyn's twin!" Chuck gaped. Indeed, the drag queen and Joe DiMaggio shared the same face, the same eyes, and the same build. "Oh, man, gross."
"Let's just get some drinks and pretend we never noticed," Sarah said.
"For sanity's sake, at the very least."
They retrieved drinks from Joe and headed back to the edge of the crowd, where it seemed a little less crazy. A deejay stood on a raised table at the front of the warehouse, massive speakers pumping out sound all around him.
"Man, this is fantastic!" Chuck looked around the warehouse as though he wasn't positive he was actually there. "I've heard about these kinds of events, but I've never been able to go to one. Awesome!"
Sarah checked to see if Chuck's honorary brother-in-law had somehow shown up, but in this case, it appeared to have been an adjective. The deejay changed the song to another one she didn't recognize, not that that was hard. The tempo and fury on the dance floor adapted to the new beat.
And she was going to get bored quickly if all they did was stand against the wall and get pounded to death by the bass.
"C'mon," she said, tightening her grip on Chuck's hand. "Let's dance!"
"Do we have to?" Chuck yelped and went forward with her. "I am really not a good dancer."
"Drink that, then," Sarah said, pointing at his beer. "Might help."
"Can only dance while intoxicated?" Chuck asked, but he pulled a face and downed the beer. He tossed the cup on the floor, since that seemed to be the resting place for every other cup in the joint. "Aren't you going to drink yours?"
"Slowly. Driving, remember?"
"Oh, right. Well, here goes noth—you promise you won't pretend you don't know me?"
Sarah just laughed and danced up against him in reply. After a second, he seemed to shrug to himself, and began to move. He really was kind of awful, Sarah thought, but she'd never admit that to him. He was stiffer than the robots he and Morgan constantly joked about, shuffling from foot to foot. His hips never moved.
"Dude! Dude!" A nearby dancer in a see-through mesh shirt and a fedora danced his way over. "Loosen up a little! You'll never keep a woman like that with those moves."
"I think I've got it," Chuck said somewhat testily.
But the dancer, either fueled by alcohol or the music or both, waved both hands at him to tell him to stop dancing. "No, no, like this. Move your body like this!"
And he burst into a sinuous, sexy wriggle that Sarah was sure only about 3% of the population total could reproduce.
Chuck gave him a baleful look. "Sure. Just like that, uh-huh."
"Sorry, sorry, just messing with you, dude. I'm Vance."
"Chuck. This is Sarah."
"First Techno Turkey Day?"
"We spotted it when we were driving by," Sarah said, leaning around Chuck. "Had to check it out."
"You picked a good year for it!" Vance hopped around them a bit like a mad sprite. He flicked the rim of his fedora and grinned, showing a gold tooth. "We move around every year, but it's always a blast. Always great to get a couple of virgins in here."
"Excuse me?" Sarah asked.
"I think he means that we're virgins only because we've never been to a Techno Turkey Day," Chuck said as Vance laughed and shimmied away, still moving like he didn't have an actual bone in his body. "That was weird, right?"
"Definitely weird."
Chuck grabbed her beer and took a sip, laughing when it was her turn to give him the scandalized look. "What? The man said dance. We both know that I can't do that remotely sober."
"You seem to be doing all right," Sarah said, and grabbed his hips to point him towards her. It was hard to tell since the lights in the warehouse weren't the greatest, but he might have blushed that. "It's not difficult, I promise."
"You seem to have more faith in my dancing skills than I do," Chuck said, frowning a little.
"I do not. I bet you're a great dancer."
"Yeah, right." Chuck gave her a sour look. "The people who aren't dancing impaired always say that and it's always lies. I have a rhythmic disorder of some type. It's bad. Just leave me in peace."
"I'm not lying." Sarah stole her beer back. "Here, try moving your feet a little more. No, not like that, you're moving like some kind of machine."
"I'm pretty sure a Roomba can dance better than I can," Chuck said. When Sarah rolled her eyes at him and stepped in closer, he nearly tripped over himself trying to step back.
"Chuck, relax. You're making too big of a deal out of this."
"I told you I wasn't a dancer."
Sarah looked down at their feet, or more specifically, at Chuck's feet, which had begun moving, almost as if on their own accord. He was actually moving his hips, shuffling from side to side. She lifted her gaze and raised an eyebrow. "And what do you call this?"
He shrugged so that his shoulders went up to his ears. "The beer kicking in?"
"Whatever it is, I'll take it." He had good rhythm for a man who claimed to have none whatsoever. But several people had bumped into her—normally not a problem, but if Chuck was going to be at all comfortable dancing, they probably shouldn't be trying in the middle of a veritable mosh pit. She grabbed Chuck's wrist and pulled him along behind her, holding the beer aloft so that none of the other crazed dancers doing the running man would slosh beer down the front of her really cute jacket. "C'mon, let's get away from this crowd."
When she looked back to make sure Chuck was still there, her eyebrows shot up into her hairline. Vance the Boneless and a small crowd of dancers were following them, jumping around to the music.
"Uh, Chuck?" Sarah asked, and pointed.
He twisted to look over his shoulder and nearly tripped her up in the process. When he turned back, he had an odd look on his face. "It's like a demented Conga line. We have ducklings!"
"What?"
"Duck—never mind. Here's good. We should dance here." Chuck startled her—and possibly him—by tugging on her hand hard enough to pull her against him. She might have let out an actual squeak in surprise, though she would deny it later.
Besides, Chuck likely didn't hear it over the sound of the music anyway.
Once he loosened up, likely thanks to the beer, Chuck actually proved to be a pretty decent dancer. He'd never be truly great, not smooth like Bryce or any of her former partners at the CIA for various dance-related missions, but he was something better: he was fun. When he broke out the "tossing the dice" dance, Sarah couldn't help herself. She laughed and mirrored him. They probably looked goofy as hell, but she didn't care.
And why should she? They were surrounded by strangers on what had to be the weirdest thing either of them had encountered on Thanksgiving. If that wasn't a cue to loosen up and enjoy themselves, she didn't know what was. So Sarah laughed and pulled out every cheesy dance move she'd seen on the countless nights of doing surveillance at clubs. Chuck rocked the lawn mower. She replied with grocery shopper. He mash potato'd. She vogued. The sprinkler, the white man overbite, even a bad rendition of the moonwalk all made an appearance. Chuck even gave her kind of a resigned shrug and half-smile—and broke out the robot with such skill, she had to figure he'd practiced that one.
Behind him, unseen, Vance and his crew burst into cataclysms of delight and mirrored him perfectly. It was all Sarah could do not to fall over laughing.
The music changed again, from something techno to R&B. Chuck brightened. "I love this song!"
"I've never heard it."
"C'mon, you'll like it. Like this." Chuck began to actually jump straight up and down, one hand lifted high over his head. Vance and his buddies needed no prompting whatsoever to mimic him until the entire group around Sarah was jumping like a bunch of sugar-high kids. After a few seconds, she started jumping, too. "I can't believe they're playing this!"
"What is it?"
But Chuck had already thrown his head back to shout along with the song. With a laugh, Sarah gave in and jumped along, twisting her hips and obeying along with everybody when the crowd shouted "Shake it like a Polaroid picture!"
Chuck surprised her again by pulling her against him like they were jive dancing. "This song came out right around the time Vi was born," he said. "I was working nights at the hospital then and it played every couple of hours on the radio!"
He spun her. Sarah let him, laughing.
"One of the patients absolutely loved it. He'd turn it up and try to convince all of us to dance along with him. I never did, but I still know all the—" Chuck broke off and twisted, almost yanking her with him. Vance and his crew abruptly gave them innocent looks and pretended that they hadn't done every single thing Chuck had done for the past ten minutes. The minute he turned back to face her, the mirroring started again. "How long has that been going on?"
"Um..." Sarah felt the absurd desire to start giggling. She was a world-class spy. She should be able to lie. But she let a giggle escape when she lied, "Not that long?"
Chuck narrowed his eyes at her. Then he heaved a gusty, melodramatic sigh and gestured with both hands at Vance and his crew. The other dancers needed no more prompting than that; they rushed forward. Sarah found herself dancing with Chuck once again, but this time, they were middle of their own little crowd. Sarah danced up against Chuck, took a turn with Vance, spun and was spun alike by strangers. Every time she switched partners, she looked over at Chuck and grinned. He grinned back, albeit a bit uncomfortably because he didn't seem to know what to do with the three or four women dancing against him. He seemed more flustered by the event than anything else.
Well, if they'd been actively searching for something outside of his wheelhouse, they'd definitely found it.
All around them, the music thrummed, the tempo barely changing from one song to the next. More people flooded in through the warehouse doors. Vance's posse grew and he introduced them around. Sarah figured the names like, "Dharma" and "Sparkle Kitten" and "Gummy Bear" were probably made up, but "Greg" wasn't.
When the song changed again for the umpteenth time, Chuck dipped her. She laughed and looped an arm around his neck to keep from landing on her butt. Chuck grinned. "Dance break! Please, save me before I perish from too much dancing."
"All right, all right, let me up." Sarah laughed as Chuck pulled her to her feet. She switched her grip to his arm and told herself it was because they didn't want to get separated in the crush. They waved at Vance to show they were headed to some other part of the warehouse. "Want another drink?"
"No, no, I'll just get more thirsty and I don't think they serve water at this place."
"Probably not, no." And it really was only a matter of time until the Fire Marshal arrived, Sarah couldn't help but think. "Oh, hey, free chair!"
Thanks to Chuck's long legs, they beat a couple of other dancers to the chair. "Here, you take it," Chuck said, gesturing to Sarah.
"Nah, I'm okay."
"How are you okay? You're wearing stilettos."
"My feet are impervious to pain. I can run for miles in these." Sarah turned her heel just to show off her boots, which she still found to be rather cute. Plus, working with Chuck and Casey, she just simply didn't like feeling too short. "Take the chair, I'll be fine."
"I refuse to believe you're actually fine with those torture devices strapped to your feet."
"They're not—fine. Here, we'll compromise. Sit down." Sarah pushed on Chuck's shoulder until he reluctantly sat. "Now, scoot over."
"What?"
"You're skinny enough, we'll manage." It was a tight fit to squeeze into the chair next to Chuck, but they managed. It was very, very warm, Sarah discovered immediately. She was already overheated from the dancing and the crush of bodies around them. And Chuck was like a human-sized furnace right next to her, radiating warm like nothing else inside the room. She could smell his aftershave, just a hint of it, under the scent of mass humanity and broken down warehouse.
Her heart sped up a little in the way that had nothing, absolutely nothing to do with the fact that she'd just been hopping around with a bunch of virtual strangers. Even though she told herself to stop it, she couldn't seem to push away a dozen traitorous little whisperings at the back of her mind, like the one that pointed out how well-defined Chuck's thigh felt up against hers, or how nice he smelled, or the fact that while he'd been dancing, that nerdy sex appeal had just shot off the charts.
She told herself to shut up.
She didn't listen.
"Oh, hey," Chuck said, and Sarah snapped out of her thoughts. But he was just digging in his pocket for his cell phone. He frowned a little in concentration as he read the display.
"What is it?" Sarah asked, trying very hard not to stare at his face, or worse, his lips. She shook her head, just a small shake, but it did nothing to clear away the sudden fog. Still, she had to focus. "It's not about Violet, is it?"
"No," Chuck said, smiling over at her. "It's Ellie. Some of the doctors and nurses put together a Thanksgiving feast at the hospital, and she wants to know if I'm coming."
"Well, are you?"
"Depends."
"On what?"
"If you're coming with me or not."
She knew it wasn't a good idea. She was a handler, Chuck was an asset, they'd already spent too much time together. Clearly. She was wondering at things she had no right wondering about. Sure, she could blame the heat and the dancing, and she'd likely be fine after just a few minutes of open air. But as an agent, she had a requirement to step back.
"Please?" Chuck asked.
As an agent, she had excellent training on how to keep herself in check. She'd be fine.
"Sure," Sarah said. "I'll go with you."
When the smile spread over Chuck's face, she entertained one brief thought that her 'requirement' to be an agent could wait, just for this one little moment. But then she was too busy grabbing his hand and hauling him back onto the dance floor for one last song before they headed off to Thanksgiving dinner at Westside Medical Center.
A/N the Second: Thanksgiving dinner finally arrives. And Ellie and Sarah talk. It's even scarier than you can imagine...for Sarah.
