A/N: The 2nd AnniConVersary (what?) celebration continues!

Thanks to everyone who sent me reviews, PMs, tumblr messages, twitter messages after I posted yesterday's chapter! I love you all! You're all so quick, too! Man! Can't tell you how much I appreciate it!

I wrote this on the fly yesterday, so I did my best in a short amount of time and I'm posting it against my better judgment because I usually edit a thing 347924 times before I put it up but now I'm nervous rambling in the author's notes and trying to make excuses in case you find any problems in the chapter. Ahhhh! (explodes!)

Disclaimer: I don't own Chuck. And it's unfortunate. It really is. Super unfortunate. I'm not gonna lie, sometimes I feel like crying. Don't worry about me, though, I'll be okay.

Have fun, Sneakers. I'll just be here. (folds hands on lap and smiles)

CON GAME COLLECTIBLES

"Are we sure this was the safest idea?"

He heard Sarah laugh over the comm, and in spite of the sound of bullets smacking into the cement partition blocks he was taking cover behind, he felt a bit lighter. Then he looked down at the gun in his hand and felt a bit unsafer. Very much unsafer.

Hopefully Bawton Inc's goons didn't know Chuck was incapable of shooting to kill, because the gun in his hand would be just about as intimidating as a banana if they did know.

The bullets hit the cement again and sent chunks of it falling onto his head, the dust catching in his curls. "That wasn't really an answer," he said into his watch once the dust cleared.

"There is no good answer, Chuck. Look up. At your one o'clock. Can you see me?"

He looked up at his one o'clock, his eyes scanning the thin metal bridges above. He saw a dark figure lying flat behind the railing. She was wearing a mask to conceal her face and hair. He didn't blame her. With a face like hers and those long, vibrant blond locks she had, she was more than memorable.

Chuck was decidedly forgettable, though. At least that was what he kept telling himself because his mask had been ripped off earlier on in the melee by a man who now lay unconscious, stuffed under a table in the break room.

"I see you," he muttered.

"Good. I'm counting down from five. When I get to zero, you get the hell out of here. Got it?"

"What about you?"

There was a long pause, before she quietly replied, "There's one thing I have to get before I go. But I'll meet you at the rendezvous spot."

Fear crept through Chuck's limbs for the woman who had only been his partner for a few months now. It didn't matter that he knew almost nothing about her except that she was guarded, closed off, secretive. And she liked a good beer better than she did cocktails. He knew that, too.

But none of that meant he didn't already care about her a great deal. He'd already begun to rely on her in London when they worked on the team he'd put together, the first time he worked with her. She was reliable. More than that, she was strong and brave and brilliant. With flashes of softness that showed beneath the hard exterior, mostly when she didn't know he was looking.

What would he do if she didn't show up to the rendezvous spot like she said she would?

He didn't have time to ponder further because she started her countdown.

"Five…"

Chuck held his gun the way she taught him to, with the perfect grip, his trigger finger in the right spot, forcing himself not to let his shoulder and arm be too tense.

"Four…"

He moved his feet and positioned them the way a runner would at the beginning of a race, his free hand braced on the dusty floor beneath him.

"Three…There's a door at the back of the room, Chuck. You see it?"

He did. "Yes."

"Good. Two…I want you to run as fast as you can, take cover as best you can. Get to that rendezvous point, Chuck. I'll accept nothing less."

She wouldn't have a choice, he thought to himself glumly. But he mumbled "Got it" nevertheless, watching as she shifted and an automatic appeared.

"One…" He saw her toss something small and round towards the men shooting at him, his eyes widening when he realized exactly what it was. Oh my God.

"Go!"

There was an explosion behind him and it lifted him off of his feet. He crashed into another stack of cement partitions, his shoulder taking the brunt of it as he cried out in pain, but he still managed to stand up and sprint towards the door at the back of the warehouse's main floor.

He slid behind whatever was close by as the bullets whizzed past him. He would wait to hear Sarah letting lose with cover fire, before leaping to his feet again and racing towards the exit. He was certain these men would rather see him dead than let the authorities deal with him. Although, Sarah throwing an explosive in their general area probably hadn't put them in a particularly good mood.

In spite of everything, his lips stretched into a small, tired smile as he pressed his back against one of the iron machines in the factory, wincing at the pain in his left shoulder.

"Are you out?" he heard her ask.

"Almost."

"Go, damn it! Run!"

He could tell by her voice, the tinge of fear mixed with sheer determination, the way she was panting, that she was running for her life as well. It made him panic. What if she didn't meet him at the rendezvous point?

Chuck Bartowski threw himself forward again, turning back to wildly shoot behind him, hoping none of the bullets hit the men who most definitely didn't return the sentiment.

He arrived at the door and slammed his boot into it, watching the lock shatter as the door burst open, not stopping for even a moment as he emerged into the overcast autumn afternoon.

Staggering the rest of the way to the fence and cursing the damn barbed wire on top of it, he shrugged off his jacket, growling in pain when his shoulder protested, tossing it over the wire and covering the barbs. He didn't know if it would work or not and he didn't care as he clambered over the fence and leapt down the other side. He grabbed his jacket and ripped it off of the barbs with a sickening tearing sound, sprinting away as the door he'd just come through opened again, a man with a rifle raised it and released a flurry of bullets in Chuck's direction.

The conman yelped (because he refused to admit it was a scream) and ran in the other direction, making a zig zag pattern because he thought maybe that made him a harder target to hit. "Sarah?" he yelled into his watch. "Sarah, can you hear me?"

He began to freak out when he didn't hear anything but a scratching noise.

"Sarah, are you okay?"

Just the scratching sound again.

Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit.

Such was the mantra running through his brain until he finally reached the street. He knew he looked homeless, like a wild man, to the woman walking her dog down the sidewalk. With bits of cement in his hair, which he reached up to get rid of as best he could once he realized that was the case. His jacket currently shredded to bits and hanging limply from his hand. Wincing at the pain in his shoulder. Sweating.

Thankfully, he'd been lucid enough to hide the gun in the waistband of his pants under his shirt before he emerged onto the main street where people might see it.

The van was in a parking garage a few streets away, but they had emptied it and cleaned to get rid of any traces of the con artists who'd bought it from a used car lot hundreds of miles away. Their supplies were nestled away in a hotel room a few miles north.

They would leave the van where it was, as they no longer had any use for it.

But he wished he knew where Sarah was. He was most likely too far away from her for the comms to work, but he tried it anyways. "Sarah, can you hear me? Are you okay?" he asked quietly into his watch. There wasn't even the scratching sound this time. It was just nothing.

Dead air.

He slumped a little at that thought and breathed, "Oh God," running his hand over his hair and looking around in a panic. What if she didn't meet him? What if she didn't show up? Where would he go? What could he do?

By the time an entire hour went by, the rest of his duties fulfilled, he was safely locked away in their hotel room. He changed into jeans and a T-shirt, which took some time considering how much his shoulder was aching. And even after, he found he couldn't sit down. Nervous energy made it impossible.

Did this qualify as abandoning his partner, he wondered? Technically, he had. He left her there. She told him to, but still, he felt more and more awful as the minutes went by. The worry was becoming unbearable by the time another half hour passed, with Chuck pacing back and forth, going from looking out the window to opening the door and glancing down the hallway.

He eyed the briefcase of money on the bed and grit his teeth. Even through his worry, he had finished the con without her. They were to grab the intel from the main system, escape, meet their current employer's contact (who had idiotically called himself "the courier"), make the exchange for the money, and get back to the hotel.

Chuck followed it to the letter and now here was the money, their employer had his intel, and they were supposed to get out of here. Job done. Money made. Onto the next one.

There was just one piece missing: Sarah Walker. And he wasn't going anywhere until she got back.

What was that last thing she had to do? Or did she say she had to get something? He couldn't remember now. His brain was too addled by concern, worry, nervousness.

Finally, he found he couldn't handle the waiting anymore. He would call her phone. They had explicitly agreed that the burn phones weren't to be used tonight for safety reasons once they actually infiltrated Bawton Inc, but he wasn't going to let another hour pass without doing whatever he could to find her. He needed his partner.

He needed Sarah.

As potentially dysfunctional as he knew it was.

Grabbing his phone from beneath the piles of clothes in his suitcase, he slipped the battery in, closed the back of the phone, and turned it on. He knew she had her phone on her because he'd seen her stash it in her black cargo pants pocket "just in case" before they headed out a few hours earlier.

It rang and rang and rang, but she didn't pick up. Chuck slumped down to the ground, his back sliding along the wall, and he hung his head in his hands.

He thought about what she'd said only a few weeks ago, as they sat on train headed from New York to Boston. He had asked her what the protocol was if one of them ever got kidnapped or fell behind in dangerous situations, expecting to discuss a general sort of rescue plan, tactics for getting one another out of trouble.

She'd simply given him a long look, confusion in her face. "Rescue?" she'd asked before turning away to look out of the window for a few minutes. He hadn't really known what to say, so he'd stared at the back of the seat in front of him and fidgeted awkwardly. It wasn't until a few minutes later that he'd seen her fingers tighten around her knee until her knuckles were white. And then she'd admitted in a soft voice, "There's no such thing in this business, Chuck."

"But we're partners," he'd responded.

He could still remember those blue eyes, how fathomless they'd been in that moment. Then her lips had parted a little. "Nobody has ever come back for me, Chuck. And I don't expect anyone ever will." She'd paused. "That includes you."

Chuck pushed himself up from the ground suddenly, his reverie broken, determination coursing through him so powerfully, it nearly overpowered the ache in his shoulder. He grabbed a jacket from his suitcase, picked up the gun again and tucked it into his waistband, yanking his shoes back onto his feet.

He was going back and he was finding her. Sarah Walker's expectations of him as a partner be damned. Maybe nobody had ever come back for her before. Maybe that wasn't how things were done in the con game. Every man and woman for themselves or whatever. But what was the point of being in a business like this if you weren't free to do as you pleased?

Damn everything to hell, he was going back for her. And there wasn't anyone on this planet who would stop him.

Except for Sarah herself.

Since she chose that exact moment to open their door and step inside. She raised her eyebrows at seeing him standing there, frozen, the gun halfway buried in his pants, his eyes wide. His knees felt like jelly he was so relieved to see her standing there.

She finally shut the door, her brow furrowed in confusion. "What are you doing?"

"Um. Doing? What?" He followed her gaze to where he still held the gun and yanked it out again, offering it to her before shaking his head at himself and setting it on the dresser beside him instead. "No, I—Right. I was just…But everything's good now so…Yes."

The room was silent and he watched as her blue eyes drifted down to his shoes, up to the jacket in his hand, to the gun, and back to his face. She knew. "…Chuck?"

"Hm?" He tossed his jacket at the suitcase and crossed his arms at his chest.

"Where were you going?"

"Nowhere."

"Nowhere?"

"Mhm, yep. Nowhere. In particular." He shrugged.

"With a gun? A gun you have no intention of using?"

Chuck halted, looking at the gun then back at her again. "W-What are you talking about? I was—I use it."

Sarah sighed deeply and walked further into the room, unbuttoning her jacket and taking her gloves and mask out of the inner pockets, tossing them on the dresser beside Chuck's gun. "Chuck, I'm not an idiot. You always use tranquilizer guns. I give you a real gun and you look like you're going to faint. I know you don't like hurting people, much less killing them…"

He was only barely listening to her, because he couldn't get over the fact that she was here. And okay. After almost two hours of him thinking he'd left her to be captured and tortured, or killed. Or any number of awful things his overactive imagination had conjured up.

None of it had.

"Chuck?"

"Yes?"

"Were you going back for me?"

Chuck had always had problems with opening his mouth too soon, and this moment was no different, but instead of something idiotic coming out, instead of lying and saying no, he shut his mouth, lowered his chin, sighed, and mumbled a quiet, "Yes."

She didn't say anything, but it wasn't because she didn't hear him. He knew she had. And he was afraid to look at her, afraid he'd see anger or disappointment, or annoyance. And then he decided he didn't care if it made her mad. She just had to suck it up. He cared about her.

But when he looked up, he didn't see any of those things. On the contrary, she was even smiling a little. "What were you going to do, exactly?"

"I, um, didn't get that far. I just knew I was going. I would've figured it out along the way." He cleared his throat.

Sarah sighed softly and shook her head, the smile still there, as minute as it was. She shrugged her jacket off and reached around him to toss it onto the bed, crossing her arms to mimic his pose. "Well, you don't have to rescue me, because I'm here—"

Her voice got caught in her throat as Chuck closed the distance between them and wrapped her up in his arms, hugging her as tightly as he could, just taking a moment to confirm that she was real and alive and whole. When he felt how tense she was, his eyes snapped open and he stepped back, moving her away from him with his hands on her shoulders. "Sorry. Sorry. You're there and I'm—" He let go of her and took a giant step back, holding his hands up. "I'm here. Over here. Sorry. I'm not—I'm not touching you anymore. Sorry."

Still as a statue, her eyes wide, she finally let her shoulders down a little and lowered her arms to her sides.

"It's just that…" He sighed heavily, running his right hand through his hair in frustration. "Leaving you there like that, abandoning you? It didn't sit right with me. It sat…wrong. What? I don't know."

She giggled quietly through her nose and it was an adorable sound. And her smile was also adorable, her eyes so bright. "You didn't abandon me, Chuck. I told you to go. I had something to get first. And anyways, you had your half of the job to do…" And then she was serious again, eyeing him a closely. "Did you do it?"

Chuck scoffed and moved to pick up the briefcase, remembering his injured shoulder at the last second and shifting to pick it up with his right hand instead. "Please. Sarah. It's me."

He popped the briefcase open and revealed the money inside. That glow in her face that made him feel like doing a backflip returned and she moved to face him. "Everything go smoothly?"

"Like butter that's been sitting out on a summer day."

She gave him a look at that and he shrugged, wincing a little. His shoulder felt worse. And she definitely noticed that time, as her eyes lowered to the offending shoulder. "I just…guess I wasn't sure you'd get it done. Sorry I misjudged you."

"Why wouldn't I get it done?"

"I don't know. You sounded like a basket case over the comms when I didn't respond."

"Wha—I wasn't a basket case at all. You didn't respond. Wait, why didn't you respond if you heard me? I was worried!"

Sarah thrusted a hand out, palm up. "I told you I was getting something, Chuck. I couldn't exactly speak when I was sneaking behind Bawton and his idiot bastards' backs."

"Oh. Good point."

"I guess I thought you were freaking out so much, calling my burn phone and all that, that you would be worrying about my well-being over finishing the job. And I apologize for thinking that." She paused, not meeting his eyes purposely, he thought. "You're a good conman."

"Charlie Brown," Chuck couldn't help but add. She gave him a funny look and his smirk died. He shook his head. "Nothing. Don't worry about it. Um! So! Was the thing you had to get—what was the thing?"

For a second, he thought she wasn't going to tell him. She seemed to pull into herself a little, her shoulders hunching, her eyes downcast. And he was disappointed. Probably more so than he had any right to be. Yes, they were partners. But she didn't owe him explanations that didn't pertain to the con at hand. There was no reason for him to assume she would tell him.

But then she cleared her throat and the small smile was back, and she was looking up at him through her eyelashes. "It was for you, actually."

Had he just heard her right?

And she must have seen the silent question on his face, because she pursed her lips. "You heard me right. Here." Sarah dug in the back pocket of her pants and pulled out a small rectangular box about the size of her palm, before passing it over to him.

Chuck couldn't remember the last time he'd been this confused and intrigued all at once. His lips twitched in something of a smile as he opened the box and peered inside. They were laminated baseball cards. Very very old baseball cards. From the 1920s and a few even from the 1910s. "What…what are these?" he asked, carefully looking them over.

"I don't know if you're all that into baseball. Or…any sports, for that matter. But I um…knew someone once who told me all little boys loved baseball cards. And I know you're not a little boy," she waved her hand in front of her, tucking the wisps of hair in front of her face behind her ear with the other, "but these are probably really expensive ones, since they were in Bawton's safe in his office."

"What—How'd you even know they were there?"

"You're the one who found the info about him before the job, and did the research and all that. I knew he collected baseball cards and he always shows them to his clients, like any egotistical, self-absorbed dipshit would." That made him chuckle and he looked back down at the cards again while she continued. "The numbers to get into the safe were easy. His mistress' birthday. It's always the mistress' birthday."

Chuck boggled at her. "Why'd you go to all this trouble for a couple of baseball cards?"

"Well, it's not exactly a couple. There are, like, eighteen of them in there I think. And none of them are worth less than two hundred grand."

"Oh. Right. Well, that's a pretty good take." He simply watched her, quietly. She knew exactly what he meant by his question before, and they both knew that she knew.

She sighed, and rubbed her arm, finally lifting her swirling blue eyes to meet his amber ones. "Today is your birthday, Chuck. And I…I wanted to get you something. That's what people do for birthdays, right?"

Chuck would never do Sarah the disservice of thinking this sort of gesture was out of character for her. She wasn't cruel or unfeeling. It was just that she didn't seem to be the sort of person to have something like this occur to her. Celebrating birthdays. Buying gifts like this…or he supposed, in this case, stealing it out of a sealed safe in the middle of a job.

"What if you'd been caught? Because you were…you know, getting these?"

"I guess that's part of the gift?" She shrugged and bit her lip. "Look, I know it's probably stupid and you probably don't even like baseball. But I had to get you something. And this seemed like a thing that just about any guy would like. Baseball." She winced. "Which I'm realizing now is definitely a generalization."

"Maybe, yeah, but—but I love baseball. I don't know some of these guys, sure, but…but ooo! Look here!" He held one up for her to look at. "That's Babe Ruth. You hit the jackpot, Sarah Walker. Because he's my favorite."

The grin on her face lit up the entire room. It was worth everything. And he wanted more. He wanted it to last for the rest of the day and into tomorrow. So he excitedly started combing through the rest of them, talking about how he was going to look them up and see how much they were worth.

She just watched quietly, a pleased look on her face, until he stopped rambling and raised his gaze to her. "This was really thoughtful, Sarah." Sure, she'd stolen them. But she'd gone out of her way, even put herself at unnecessary risk, so that she could give him something. "I don't—I don't know what to say. Except thank you."

"Yeah, no problem." She gave him a closed-mouth smile and shrugged.

"Hey, how did you even know my birthday? I don't think I ever told you."

"I know. But when we first became partners, I thought it was a good idea to do a secret background check on you. Just to be sure you weren't a maniac or, you know…"

"The next Zodiac killer?"

"Basically. Yes."

"That's pretty sneaky." He smirked to let her know he was teasing.

"I know." Innocence looked really good on her, especially when it was playful, with a hint of mischief. "Happy Birthday, Chuck Bartowski."

He smiled softly at her, lifting the cards in his hand again and nodding. "Thank you, Sarah Walker. Really. I love 'em."

"You, uh…might have to wait awhile before you try to sell them, though. You know, if that's what you mean to do with them. 'Cause he'll probably report the theft and…"

"Right, of course. Yeah. Well, I'm not feeling like selling them just yet anyways. I've got lots of research to do." And he actually was legitimately excited about that.

God, Sarah Walker was such an enigma. A lovely, intelligent, wily, courageous and, now he knew, thoughtful enigma.

"So…yeah. In the meantime, you know, before we head out, I'm going to go down the hall to get you some ice for that shoulder." She backed away from him, her eyes dropping to said shoulder, before she gave him another small smile and went to the door.

"It's—I mean I'm fine for now."

Sarah threw a look over her shoulder that clearly projected "Who are you even trying to fool?" before she smirked and left the room.

He watched the door shut behind her with a dreamy smile on his face, and he wondered (not for the first time) if he wasn't in love with this woman. This woman who spent an extra hour at the scene of their crime, surrounded by men who absolutely wanted her dead, sneaking into a safe and stealing collectible baseball cards because she wanted to give him a gift for his birthday.

No, he wasn't really all that big on baseball anymore, like he used to be in high school. He didn't have time, really. There was a certain amount of disconnect from the world that went with being in the con game. Things like sports, celebrities…they were for people who lived regular lives, with regular jobs. People like Captain Awesome and his buddies from UCLA.

But Sarah didn't know him. She didn't know his likes and dislikes. She knew he had comic books stashed in his things every so often. And she saw the sites he read his web comics on. He made movie references that went over her head, it seemed, more often than not. But other than that, she really didn't know much about him.

And for what it was worth, the effort she went to was worth more than whatever these cards would end up selling for. That fact that she even knew his birthday, and went out of her way to acknowledge that she knew, to get him a gift and the way she'd become so vulnerable and shy and unsure…

She appeared again with a bag of ice, holding it up for him to see as she stepped inside and shut the door behind her. As she stood close to press the ice to his shoulder, he wondered whether it was possible to love a person when you knew absolutely nothing personal about them. Was it possible to love her based only on small, quiet moments? Or her smile? Or the way she moved? Or the way her voice sounded in the middle of the night when she muttered to herself while researching on her laptop?

He thought, in this moment, with her standing so close and asking him what the hell he even did to injure his shoulder…it was possible.

A/N: Awwww Happy Birthday to yooooou! Happy Birthday to yoo-(rotten tomato to the face) ... well then ...

Another disclaimer. I know absolutely NOTHING about baseball. So huzzah. Also I don't know anything about baseball cards (and neither does Sarah, apparently)...BUT I do know there's this one card from 1910 or something that's worth like $2mil because the player didn't want his cards sold with cigarette packs anymore. He didn't like the idea of little kids buying cigarettes to get his cards so they discontinued it. And now it's such a rare card that it's worth bundles and bundles!

See, people? This is why we look things up on the internet. Yessss. (Home run! And other baseballish terms. Et ceteraaaa et ceteraaaa.)

Hope you enjoyed this one! Keep checking my profile for all your ConVerse Outline needs!

-SC