A/N: Thanks for the warm welcome back, folks. Buckle up.
She could relax now. They had been in the air for about twenty minutes, and she felt herself slowly decompressing. They had done it. They had completed a mission they had no damn business being on. And to think Shaw wanted to send him alone, onto that ship, with that many ring agents…the thought made her queasy.
She realized then that Chuck hadn't said anything in a while, and she glanced over at him. It worried her when Chuck Bartowski was quiet. The past few days had been so much, professionally...and personally. She ran her hand through her hair, frustration seeping through her. What was the right thing to do...for them? This mission had nearly killed him, and he had the bruises to prove it. How in the hell were they going to keep that from Shaw?
Shaw was a big problem.
Something was going on there, something was off.
Her father always told her to trust her instincts, to be aware when your gut was telling you something, and right now it was telling her not to trust Shaw. She didn't trust anyone in the spy game—Well, not until this mission, and now she only trusted two people. No, she trusted three. Casey, Chuck, and Beckman.
She sat with that for a moment. She had trusted people before in her spy career and it had cost her. It had almost cost her this time, but if she were really honest with herself, Chuck had no choice other than to do what he did.
And that was the real question. Being a spy meant that Chuck could die at any moment. Did that mean she should throw all of her misgivings and fears about being with him and dive in? Live her life? Take what she wanted, knowing it was what he wanted too? Life was short, after all. Or...did it mean she needed to build the fortifications higher, block him out, protect them both from the pain this constantly dangerous and potentially deadly job might hand them?
There was no sense in lying to herself, she knew she cared for him. It was stupid to think that it'd be easier for her to take if they weren't together and he died. It would destroy her whether she allowed herself to be with him or not. So she could strike that bullshit line of thinking altogether.
And the question now became what Chuck would do if they were together. Would she drag him into the darkness that had been her life in the CIA? Could he survive in the shadows? Or, would Chuck Bartowski show her the light of his world? He already had. This mission alone had changed things for her, had helped her see things that had maybe always been there but she kept missing them. He'd changed her. And now there were people she trusted.
She laid her head back against the seat, thinking of the last time she had trusted people, the way it had exploded in her face, and the friendship it had cost her.
She glanced over at him again and saw that look on his face. The worried look that told her he was pretty sure he'd screwed something up.
"Hey," she said gently. He turned to her and she saw the weariness in his wan features. Was this how it was going to be? Was this life going to wear on him and bleed his soul the way it had hers? "What are you thinking about?"
He didn't say anything for a bit, chewing on his lip, not looking at her as he finally muttered, "I'm not a good enough partner." She sat up a little, frowning. "We let someone die, and I think Shaw is going to try and find a way to break us up. This partnership. This team."
That part, she could answer. And easily. "Chuck, Beckman is in control of the Intersect project, and she has said that the only CIA agent she will allow into this operation is me," Sarah reminded him.
"It's Shaw, Sarah," Chuck replied to remind her. "He carries weight...somehow. His authority carries weight. You've seen it. I know you know what I mean. And-and he thinks I'm worthless."
She tilted her head back, looking at the ceiling. "Then he's a fucking fool." Her voice was strong and clear. It needed to be for him to understand, for him to believe what she was saying.
"Yes, Hannah died, but that's known as acceptable losses, and while I know it's not acceptable to you, or to me, it is to our bosses." She looked at him then, and he was watching her closely, his brow furrowed. "Chuck, I trust you, and it's been a long time since I said that about any partner." There was a silence that hung between them, and she knew exactly what he was thinking. God, he deserved to know. After not saying things for so long, and knowing she'd hurt him with her silence, this—this she could say. She looked him directly in the eye. "I never said that about Bryce."
She felt his brain turning, felt him processing what she had said and when he spoke, it was exactly what she should've expected from Chuck.
"That's gotta be hard, not trusting your partner." There was silence for a moment, and he began again, his voice tentative. "Thank you for that trust, and this time I won't break it. I promise."
The courtyard. After she'd come back post-fight. She knew the exact conversation he was referring to. She saw it in him, the sorrow he still felt over the fact that he'd kept all of it from her.
But it was over, it was in the past, they were moving forward...they had moved forward. The issue between them now was what this next step was going to look like. She knew what he wanted… Hell, she knew what she wanted, but at what cost?
But then she saw a slow smile growing on his face as he stared straight ahead. "I told you I'd earn it back."
God, she shouldn't do this. She shouldn't, but damn it, she was going to. "Maybe you never completely broke it."
"Maybe, maybe not, but I was wrong either way. I did wrong by you." She had to nod in agreement to that point. "So, ahem, I'm your partner, huh?" She shook her head and rolled her eyes a little at that. "I mean, you did say—"
"Yes, Chuck, you're my partner," Sarah replied, turning her body toward his, propping her cheek in her hand, feeling the warmth flow between them. She had missed this. If she was honest with herself, this was what had hurt the most over the past few weeks. The distance, the friction, not being able to just...talk. "You're my best friend, and…other than that, I don't know."
Chuck nodded, trying to hold back the grin. "Yeah you do," he said softly, and with confidence she didn't know that she had ever heard coming from him. She wanted to run, part of her away from him, part of her toward him. "You just haven't come to terms with it yet."
She just held his gaze and waited for him to do his normal back down, but he didn't. "What are you really thinking?"
"What would have happened if I had told you everything from the beginning? What would you have done?" He just watched her, unblinking.
"I may have told you to run," Sarah said after a minute. "That's not true." She took a deep breath. "I may have told you we had to run." Chuck sat there quietly, like he didn't know what to do with that. And as much as she enjoyed this warmth, it was a little too warm...in an airplane...no one around…
She shook her head and watched him squirm, deciding to rescue the both of them. "Are you still in pain?"
He knew what she was doing, she was sure. But he went along with it.
"Yeah, my neck is ridiculously sore," he admitted, touching his throat.
Sarah stood up, walked to her bag, and searched for some painkillers. But along with the painkillers, she found the pieces of paper with the numbers on them that she had stolen from the Ring agent's room. She let herself look at it for a long moment, and then she went back to Chuck, handing him the bottle even as she studied the paper.
"May I see?" he asked. Sarah nodded and handed the paper to him. "What does this mean?"
It seemed to be a rhetorical question, but she furrowed her brow.
"What do you think?" she asked, causing him to turn and look up at her. "Chuck, you're the smartest person I know. I can't think of why would she have those coordinates, if the key was actually on the boat."
Chuck bit his lip, thinking. And then he sat up a bit straighter, a spark in his brown eyes. "Okay. Work with me here." Sarah nodded. "The agent who had these didn't know where the key was, so this was somehow important...why?" He was silent for a moment. "This was important. Why else would they have it?"
"Could it have been where to rendezvous with the rest of the Ring?" Sarah offered.
"If it was, why have it written down?" Chuck asked. "One thing I've learned from you two is that you never write things down while you're in the field." She never would get over the things Chuck Bartowski learned from just observing. "Where are these coordinates then?"
"Somewhere outside of Prague," Sarah replied. Chuck's eyes went wide. "What?"
"Do you still have the file on Stromberg?" She got up, went back to her bag, found it, and brought it to him. He dug through the file, then finally shut it and turned to her. "I have an idea."
"Go on, then, partner."
The smile on his face lit up the plane. And then he cleared his throat and ran a hand down his chest, looking at her seriously. Like a real agent. It was cute and she bit the inside of her cheek to look back at him just as seriously.
"Okay, so, Stromberg was born near these coordinates, Stromberg has the device, Hannah has the key, and we know now that she was being blackmailed," Chuck began.
"Okay, but what do these coordinates have to do with Hannah?" Sarah asked.
"I mean, it's a guess," he began, obviously unsure of himself.
"Chuck." She found herself smirking a little. "Guess away."
"Her family is being held, like Valle told us," Chuck began.
It hit her like a ton of bricks. "Holy shit, that's where they're keeping her family," Sarah replied, putting it all together. "Do you think the Ring agent was going to blackmail Hannah with their safety to get the key from her?"
"I don't know," Chuck admitted, "but these Ring agents seem to be out for themselves first, like Valle told us. But, why else would these coordinates be important? I know where your family is, give me the key and maybe I can help you get them out? That sounds very bad guyie to me."
Sarah nodded. "That fits the M.O. of the Ring agents we've seen so far." She smiled at him. "That's good work, Chuck."
"Thank you," he said softly, pride on his face. He held up the coordinates then, the smile gone. "We have to go here."
"Slow down, Chuck. Those aren't our orders," Sarah reminded him. "We are going to Langley, meeting Shaw and Beckman, and then we go from there." She studied him for a second and saw the look of determination on his face. "You're going to do it again, aren't you?" She couldn't keep the resignation out of her voice.
"What?" he asked, genuinely confused.
"Chuck, this is a bad idea. We don't know how many agents are holding them, we don't know that's what this is." Chuck kept staring at the paper. "Although your guess is as good as most people's certainties," she muttered. "Chuck, please."
He looked over at her, and gave one quick nod. "No, you're right. Last time I didn't talk things through with you, and I screwed everything up."
"This isn't the same, at all," Sarah began.
"I know, but, you're my partner and partners have each other's back, and if you think this is a bad idea, then I won't." She studied him for a moment and gave him a smile. "What do you think we should do?"
"Tell Beckman what you think, let our people do recon, and if there is someone being held there, she will work to get them free."
Chuck nodded, and then yawned. "Listen, I'm exhausted, my head is killing me. I'm going to get some sleep."
"Need me to get you a blanket?" Chuck gave her a faux glare and then stuck his tongue out at her. He curled up against the seat, turning toward her, and shut his eyes. Sarah watched him, relief filling her that he was going to listen to her for once.
She shut her eyes to go to sleep, but just as she was about to slip under, she remembered the last time he had promised someone he would save their family. Her eyes snapped open again and she studied him. She groaned inwardly. Nothing was ever easy when Chuck Bartowski was involved.
}o{
He kept wringing his hands, thinking about the promise he had made Valle. "We're not going to let anything happen to them."
Sarah had told him to let it go. She was right. He was a trainee. They were down a man with Casey hurt. What did he think he was going to do, storm the place they were being held with Chuck armed with nothing but his tranq gun? There was no way Shaw would go with them. Not that he wanted Shaw with them, but they needed someone else. He glanced over at Sarah who was watching him. She reached over, put her hand over his, squeezed, and pulled it away. He gave her a tight smile.
What was this? What were they? What was going to become of them?
That was the other thing that haunted his dreams.
They were back to where they were before he had screwed up so badly. In one way, they were even closer to what he'd been aching for since nearly the beginning of all of this. But on the other hand, he feared they seemed to also be further away.
Whether he liked it or not, being a spy had affected them in a way he'd never anticipated. He had thought he understood everything from watching Sarah and Casey on the missions in Burbank, but Hannah's loss, the loss of human life, had rocked him to his core. No one deserved what she got.
He looked over at Sarah and thought about all the things she had to do as part of her job to protect herself, and while he thought he had understood, he realized now that he never had. He hadn't even been close to understanding. But he was beginning to understand her frustration with him becoming a spy. He understood how someone could fear they were losing their soul, and if he was truly honest with himself, he was falling in love with her because she hadn't. After one mission, the things he felt when an innocent person died… How had she kept her humanity? How had she remained the amazing badass that she was?
"I need to say something," he heard himself say. He felt her turn to face him, but this time he couldn't look her in the eye. "I fucked up badly with what I did to you, and it took all of...well, this," he said gesturing vaguely, "to even understand what you were worried about. I need you to know that I'm not going to change, and I know why I'm not going to change. I have you as a partner, and you are going to keep reminding me who I am, because that's who you are, Sarah. You are wonderful. You care so damn hard, and you try and hide it from everyone, but you don't hide it from me. I see you, Sarah. That's why I know I'll never be the person you've been afraid I might become. You would never let me."
The door opened to Beckman's office, and her secretary gestured for them to come through. Sarah was giving him a look he couldn't decipher. It didn't matter. Whatever she thought of what he said, it didn't matter. Because it was the truth, and she needed to know it. She needed to know that he believed everything he had just said. He wouldn't have become a spy if it wasn't for her. She was right about that, she just had the reasons wrong. He had become a spy because he knew he had her in his corner, and with Sarah Walker in his corner, how could he lose?
"Team," Beckman said as they entered her office. Shaw was sitting on the corner of her desk, tossing a paperweight into the air and catching it. She gave him a look but he obliviously missed it.
Sarah carefully handed the key to Beckman, and watched Shaw's reaction to the move. Something niggled the back of her head, her spy-sense was going off, and she didn't know why, but she had an idea.
"I've read your report, Agent Carmichael," Beckman began. She saw Shaw roll his eyes.
"Did I use the font you wanted?" Chuck cut in. "I always like Times New Roman, but some have other preferences." Beckman glared at Chuck and he cleared his throat. "Right, sorry."
"You have made an interesting proposal," she continued. "I expect Agent Walker is on board with this?" Chuck looked over at Sarah.
"I am not sure what you're referring to, Ma'am," Sarah said, turning to Chuck and giving him a smile. He began to wither under it. She knew. Damn it, she knew. He was gonna be in trouble again, and right after getting out of the dog house too.
"Doesn't matter, it's not going to happen. I'm not risking a CIA agent for that kind of foolhardy plan," Shaw cut in. "I think it's high time Agent Walker returned to other, more important duties and that will be in my report." Beckman glanced at Sarah, and Sarah knew what she had to do.
"Agent Shaw, how about you and I go talk privately, and let the NSA discuss their matters?" Sarah offered. Shaw nodded, a small smile on his face, an intrigued smile. She followed him through the door and into a private office.
}o{
Chuck watched them leave, worried. For so, so many reasons.
"Agent… Chuck," Beckman corrected. "Trust her."
"Oh, I do," Chuck replied. "It's Shaw. He doesn't like me."
"Neither did Graham," Beckman countered.
"I'm aware," Chuck replied, sighing. "I'm very aware."
}o{
Sarah did not sit down once they reached the conference room. She had been running through scenarios in her mind and this was the best she could come up with on such short notice. Damn it. Chuck just did exactly what he said he wouldn't. She resisted the urge to huff in frustration. She knew why he'd done it. She shouldn't have been surprised.
"Cards on the table, Shaw, I need you to back off," Sarah said, making him lift an eyebrow in surprise. "I have been working on this assignment for almost a year. I am good at what I do, you cannot question that."
"I don't," Shaw replied. "Sarah, I fear you're compromised."
She snorted. "First, he's an agent, not an asset. I can't be compromised. Second, I'm not compromised. I'm trying to do my job." She crossed her arms and smirked a little. "And I won't be mad if I reap the rewards that there might be afterwards."
"Ahhhhh," he said, a smile coming to his face that made her want to shiver. "You're looking for career advancement." Sarah shrugged, not replying, but she let him see the smirk on her face. "With your record, do you even think that's possible?"
"Why do you think I want to remain in Burbank?" she asked. "Come on, Daniel, you know how squeamish the public gets about wet work. I need something on my record that I can talk about. Something besides the fucking Wildcard Enforcer." Shaw gave a head gesture acknowledging her point. "I need this to advance my career. What's it going to take?"
"How do I know you're loyal to us, to me, to the CIA?" Shaw asked. "How do I know you and him aren't…." He trailed off, his arms crossed, giving her a significant look. "You do have a bit of a reputation."
Sarah wanted to punch him in the throat, kick him in the balls, rip his arm off, shove it up his ass, and shove her hand down his throat to shake the hand wedged in his stomach. Male agents could do what they wanted with whomever, whenever, however, and they got high fives. If a woman had a relationship, once, with her partner, she had a "reputation".
"I had a relationship with one man, who also happened to be my partner," she retorted.
"You gotta give me something," Shaw began. The look she gave him told him that was never happening. "No, not that...although…"
"Oh, grow the fuck up."
"Fair enough," he snarked, amused. "How do I know you're not playing me?"
"What if I told you my real name? What if I gave you something I've never given anyone else?" Sarah asked.
"Why is that important to me?"
"Daniel, I was a con artist's kid, and I changed my name frequently, not because I wanted to, because I had to. I've been a spy my whole life, and I've used aliases left and right. It's up to you if that's enough of a show of faith. It's all I have."
Shaw stood there, considering what she was saying. "If I say yes, what are you proposing?"
"Let me work with Chuck, let me continue to be his cover girlfriend. It's the easiest way I can keep him safe. If he's dead, this operation can't continue." He snorted over that. "Let me decide when a mission is out of his league or not, as his trainer."
"You're not going to Prague. It's too crazy," Shaw countered. "The only way you go is if there's a third member of the team, and Casey's hurt. I'm not going because I'm too well known in Ring circles and I would be walking into certain death."
"Fine, we let Beckman deal with Chuck and this situation."
Shaw was silent for a moment. "What is it? What's your name?"
Sarah took a deep breath. "It's Sam," she said softly.
}o{
Chuck sat there, having told Beckman everything—well, not everything—that had happened on the ship. He swore two or three times she was going to laugh out loud, but she never did, to her credit. The door opened and Shaw and Sarah walked back in. She took a seat beside him but didn't even glance at him as she turned to Beckman instead.
"If you can find an acceptable third member that can be trusted, Chuck and I will go to Prague."
"We will?" he asked before he could stop himself. Shaw snorted out a derisive laugh. "I mean, we will."
"Fair enough," Beckman replied. "I'll call you when we have more for you. For now, keep close. Agent Walker, will you be staying at your apartment?"
Sarah nodded.
"You have an apartment here?" Chuck asked her. She didn't look at him. "I mean, right, you have to live somewhere."
"Agent Carmichael," Beckman said, her voice not hiding her irritation. Chuck whipped around to look at her. "We've rented you a room at this hotel." She handed him a paper with the name and address.
"Thank you," he replied. "Are we free until then because I've always wanted to see all the sights of—"
"You're dismissed," Beckman said, looking like she was barely resisting an eye roll. Chuck hopped up and headed out the door, careful not to give Sarah the opportunity to yell at him at that particular moment, in front of everyone.
}o{
"In this temple, as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the Union, the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever."
He was standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial, studying it, when he felt her presence. He knew it was her.
She walked up to him, stood by his elbow, but he never looked over at her. "Sarah..." he began, feeling her frustration in the air between them.
"Don't," she replied. "I don't want to talk about it." He nodded and they stood there in silence for a few long moments. "I thought you'd come here first. Before anything else." He heard something in her tone, but he didn't know what. "I wanted to tell you what happened with Shaw. So we're on the same page." He nodded and finally glanced at her for a moment before turning back to look at the monument, swallowing hard. "I had to convince him I'm on his side, the side of the CIA, and that this is nothing more than me trying to get my foot in the door for a promotion one day."
"Smart," he replied. "But I'd expect nothing less from you." They stood in silence for a long minute, and he squirmed a little.
"Just ask."
"How'd you convince him?" he blurted, careful not to look at her. "He's not exactly a trusting guy."
"I told him I'd tell him my real name, something that's very important to me, that no one else knows," she replied. He didn't say anything. "I told him my real name was Sam."
He felt like the floor had opened and swallowed him up. His ribcage had crunched in on his lungs and his heart, squeezing both insufferably. "Your real name…" he repeated. "Wow. Uh… s-so it worked huh?" Chuck turned and looked at her for a long time.
He couldn't read her face. She just stared up at the monument, her eyes fastened on the plaque. "Yep. It worked. We've got the green light. We're being assigned to rescue the Lius from the clutches of the Ring, just like you wanted."
Chuck normally would've let that sting, but he was still stinging from her revelation. Sam was her real name, and she'd told someone else, a man who'd only just recently been tacked onto their team, who'd done nothing to prove himself trustworthy, who hadn't proven himself as even a real member of their team yet. She'd told Shaw her real name was Sam before she told him. God, that stung, even if it wasn't for any reason that meant she harbored anything but malice towards Shaw. But he still couldn't help feeling hurt.
"Yeah. Good." He nodded. As much as he felt a certain bitterness creeping up through him, as hurt as he was, he turned to look at her. "Thank you. For protecting me. Protecting us. Giving him something that was probably...difficult for you...in order to get him to go along with this."
"Well, it was obviously important to you. What else are partners for?" He could feel tension between them now as she looked down at her feet for a moment, then flashed her blue gaze back up at him. "See you back at Langley tomorrow. Bright and early. Don't stay out here too long."
Part of him wanted to snap that he'd be fine, that he didn't need her patronizing him. That he was a training to be an agent with the NSA. That he'd taken out a freaking monster of a Ring agent. But then he was reminded that he hadn't taken out Hugo Panzer. A can of paint had. So he just nodded.
But she didn't see it. Because she'd already gone.
}o{
Chuck stared down at his phone, his brow furrowed, thousands of terrible scenarios going through his mind. "Shit." He huffed, looking out of his hotel window, then back down at the phone again.
Come to this address. We need to talk.
If he ended up going to Hell, when he got to the fiery gates, the demon gate keeper would say, "We need to talk." He didn't know what this was about, but he hated—hated—those four words more than anything. We need to talk.
She'd done that shit to him before. That we need to talk shit. He'd hated it then, and he still hated it now. Maybe he hated it even worse now.
Chuck grabbed his jacket and shrugged it on, feeling both glum and, honestly, annoyed. He was annoyed. What kind of a damn text was that to send someone? Come to this address, she said, as if she could order him around. And sure, Agent Sarah Walker might be a little out of touch with pop culture, but she knew enough about socializing and people in general to know that everybody hated We need to talk. And yet, there it was. In that damn text about the address of, he assumed, the apartment she stayed in when she wasn't on a mission. Before the Intersect had been sent to him in an email. Before she'd had to pick up and move to Los Angeles to be his handler and bodyguard.
She knew it would annoy him. He'd even gotten a text like that from Ellie while he was with Sarah during a mission. He'd flashed the text at her at the time, and he'd said something along the lines of, "Worst four words in the English language."
She knew!
What he wondered was if Sarah had picked up on the fact that her tactic to quash Shaw's suspicions and let them go on this mission to save the Lius together had left him feeling more than simply piqued. Maybe he was being unreasonable, being as bitter about it as he was. And maybe she was angry with him for feeling entitled to knowing that information about her before the stuffshirt two-by-four the CIA had slapped onto their team.
Or maybe she didn't notice at all and this meeting was about the mission.
But he didn't think it was about the mission at all. He'd felt her tone in the text.
Chuck pushed open the lobby doors of the hotel and tipped the valet to hail him a taxi. The ten minutes it took for the taxi to get to Sarah's apartment were spent in consternation. And that was putting it lightly.
He imagined her sitting there at her vanity all hoity-toity, holding her cell phone, pissed at him for some reason—because when wasn't she pissed at him?—and anger-typing, "Come to this address. We need to talk." Then smirking at her reflection in the mirror as she brushed her perfect hair.
Was he being ridiculous? Definitely. Did he care? No. He could say whatever the hell he wanted to say in his own God damn brain.
Add to that the fact that he hadn't been able to stop himself from dwelling on how Agent Daniel Shaw had learned Sarah Walker's real name before he had. After everything they'd been through together, the highs and lows, the way they managed to continue sticking by one another no matter what… He'd been so patient, understanding when she didn't open up to him the way he did to her. He wasn't entitled to any of her story, anything about her. Not unless she chose to give it to him.
But she didn't choose to give him her real name. Not for any reason. Instead, she'd chosen to give that to Shaw. It felt like she'd kneed him in the gut. He couldn't help feeling that way. He couldn't help feeling like maybe she wasn't as comfortable with him as he'd thought. Maybe she didn't exactly trust him with her real name.
That, again, was ridiculous. She was comfortable with him. She trusted him.
But why in the hell did Shaw get "Sam"? Out of all people… Shaw? If it had been Casey, he wouldn't be so bitter about it. He'd be a little hurt, maybe, but not really. They were partners, they had each other's backs. If she'd told Ellie even, he'd get it. Considering how close they were, he imagined there was a lot Sarah told Ellie that he'd never know about. But Shaw?
The taxi finally pulled up to a building that looked like it had been built in the eighties, ten or so floors of cookie cutter windows, a flag with some coat of arms that surely meant something hanging above the entrance to the building.
Chuck paid the driver and got out, walking up to the doors and opening them. And of course—of course—there was a sign on the elevator that said OUT OF ORDER USE STAIRS. And the heat was freaking blasting in the entryway. And… as he checked his phone, he realized her apartment was on the sixth floor.
"Fuck," he snapped. He repeated it over and over and over as he began his journey.
Thank God for training, because he never would've made it a couple of months ago. As it was, he'd had to strip off his jacket and carry it up the last two flights. "Come to this address. We need to talk," he grumbled to himself mockingly. "After you bust your ass up six flights of stairs."
He swore if she was just bringing him there for some arbitrary reason, he'd open her window up and just climb out of it at this point. He was in such a horrible mood. He just wanted to put the last few hours out of his mind. And he had a pretty good feeling this "talk" would not be doing that for him.
Taking a moment to collect himself, trying to look a little less like he'd just climbed six floors' worth of stairs, he walked down the hallway to Sarah's apartment and knocked, willing himself to not take all of this out on her, when it wasn't really her fault. She'd only done it to get Shaw to allow both of them to go on this mission together. She'd been looking out for their best interests. She'd done it to get them sent on a mission he connived to get them in the first place. Her confession had nothing to do with Shaw himself.
And because his brain was his own worst enemy, it kept repeating the name Sam over and over and over and over and over in his head.
The door was whipped open and he looked right into Sarah's face. She'd changed into a plain black T-shirt and grey sweatpants, her hair pulled up into a messy bun. "Come in."
He couldn't read her face as he stepped inside, moving out of the way so that she could shut and lock the door. "Hello to you too," he muttered.
Damn it. He'd already failed the whole not taking it out on her thing.
Sarah turned slowly and gave him a look but didn't take the bait. "Hi," she muttered back, gesturing with a flick of her head for him to follow her.
In spite of everything, he allowed himself the time to take in as much about this place as he could. The lack of personality with blank walls, no photographs or anything personal anywhere... the bare minimum in furniture. He imagined she rarely spent time in this place, even though it was hers. Did the CIA pay for it? Had they put her up here when she was first pulled in? Or had she gotten this place all on her own?
"This is...um...this is nice."
"You don't have to lie," she said, looking at him over her shoulder. There was no humor in her face or voice. "It's a shell of an apartment. But I never needed more than this. So it is what it is."
The only way he could describe the feeling he was getting from her was icy. He felt a chill between them. "No, I-I get that," he tried. "Definitely."
She spun to face him, her hand landing on the back of one of the chairs pushed into the table. Raising her eyebrows, she asked, "You want anything to drink?"
"Oh. Uh." Six floors' worth of stairs. "Actually, is there any chance I could have some water? Your elevator's broken."
"Oh. Yeah. Sorry." She walked around him, went into the kitchen, and went into her cupboard to get him one of the three differently sized glasses inside. He followed her, trying to get more of a sense of the place. God, she really must not have spent any time here, even before she'd been sent to LA.
She filled the glass with water from the sink, went to the freezer and popped it open, looking inside. "I don't have ice I guess. Sorry."
"Oh. S'okay." She slammed the door shut again and thrust the water at him. He took it. "It's...cold." He took a sip, meeting her gaze as he did so.
"Good." She clenched her jaw. "Now we can talk about what happened today."
Chuck raised his eyebrows, lowering the glass. He felt himself gaping.
"Don't look at me like that, Chuck. I said earlier that I didn't want to talk about it. Obviously that meant we'd talk later. When we aren't out in public standing in front of one of the most popular memorials in the country."
"Obviously…" he muttered, furrowing his brow. And then it hit him. "Oh."
"Yeah, oh. What in the hell was the point of that talk we had on the plane if you were just going to do whatever the fuck you wanted anyway?" she asked, thrusting her hand out, palm up. "We were on the same page! At least, I thought we were. You made me think we were. And the second we got in front of Beckman, you did exactly what we agreed we wouldn't do!"
He winced. She was maybe right. "I-I did. I know I did. And I'm sorry for that, Sarah. But I was thinking…"
"I don't care what you were thinking, Chuck! We made an agreement. You agreed with me. You agreed that it was for the best that we didn't pursue a mission to rescue the Liu family. We were agreed. Were we not agreed on that?" She pulled her chin back and looked up at him through her eyelashes critically, daring him to say anything but yes.
"We were. We definitely were. But Sarah, the more I thought about it, the more I knew we'd never be able to live with ourselves if we didn't at least try. Especially after Hannah was killed by the Ring." He stepped closer. "We owe them to try."
"You said, and I quote, 'If you think this is a bad idea, then I won't.' And then you asked me what we should do with those coordinates. Is that not what happened?"
"That is what happened. It is. But you hafta let me explain!" He thrust both hands out and realized he was in danger of spilling water, which probably wouldn't improve things for him, so he reached over and set the water down on the counter, stepping closer. "I made a promise. I promised Nicolas I would do whatever I could to make this right."
"I knew it," she groused, pressing her fingers against her forehead as if she had a pain behind her eyes. "Chuck, you make promises like that, and it comes back to bite you in the ass. You can't do that. I know how badly you wanna be a spy. Okay...but that means taking everything that goes along with it. And some of that means letting things go. You should've let this go!" He opened his mouth to argue with her, starting to get frustrated now. But she cut him off, holding up a hand. "But! But this is who you are. And I should've known you'd want to do this no matter what you agreed to on the plane. What really bothers me more than anything is that you…" She huffed, shaking her head. "You pulled the rug right out from under me, Chuck!"
He blinked. "Pulled the rug?"
"No warning at all. You-You went behind my back and wrote it up in your report to Beckman without even talking to me about it. No 'I've changed my mind, Sarah'. You just went around me, went straight to your superior instead of talking to your partner first." She poked herself in the chest. "I thought we were going to give her the coordinates, tell her our suspicions, and let her make the determination of what should be done once they ran the numbers." She poked him in the chest this time. "I looked like I didn't know what the hell I was doing! I looked out of my depth. I looked like someone who didn't have control of the situation!"
"I'm sorry! I just—I knew that if I told you I'd changed my mind, you'd somehow talk me around in-in circles and I'd get right back to where we started, the Liu family would still be in danger, and I'd never know what happened to them. I would've failed in my promise. Whether-Whether I should've made the promise in the first place or not!" he added, seeing that she was going to call him out on making the promise. "I couldn't let that happen! So I put the suggestion that we take on the mission ourselves in my report."
"You're supposed to talk to your partner!" she exclaimed, crossing her arms at her chest. "And now I'm gonna have to go gallivanting off to Prague, going right into what could potentially be a seriously dangerous Ring base to save people who might not even be there because nobody has checked!"
"General Beckman wouldn't approve it if it was that dangerous!"
She scoffed. "God, you newbie." She laughed, and it felt condescending. It rankled him. "That's exactly what these agencies do. That's what this world is. They send their agents into these situations that might end up with them getting killed. It's a calculated risk, a risk they send someone else to take on while they sit behind their fucking desks and cross their fucking fingers, Chuck."
"Stop it. Don't do that to me. Don't make me out to be some naive and inexperienced—"
"You are inexperienced, Chuck! I'm not trying to patronize you or make you feel bad. You're still training, for fuck's sake! Look, I backed you up in there because that's what a partner is supposed to do. And you're...you're rash and sometimes even reckless…" That made him clench his jaw. "There's no way I could let you go into all of that without me. But you need to know that what you did today really sucked."
"I know, I know. I know I know I know. I can't do anything right."
"Oh Goddddd," she groaned, rolling her eyes.
"No! Don't roll your eyes at me! I'm really sorry I went behind your back, but every single time I make a decision that goes against what you want, I get...I get this." He gestured to her wildly from head to toe.
"And what's this mean?" she snapped, mocking his wild hand gesture back at him.
"A lecture! I get a lecture!"
"I've been a spy for a decade, Chuck! You've been a spy for, oooohhh…" She glanced at her watch pointedly. "...a month? Maybe?!"
"WHY ARE YOU LOOKING AT YOUR WATCH?! IT'S NOT A CALENDAR!"
"IT WAS FOR EMPHASIS! A VISUAL AID!" she barked. "And stop being childish! I don't want you going behind my back to Beckman without talking to me. I don't want you making me look foolish!"
He still had that terrible image in his mind of her telling Shaw what her real name was. He felt the heat of envy and anger all at once. Sam…
"So that's what this is about? You don't like looking foolish."
"Does anybody?" she asked, throwing her hands up. "Especially in front of my superior, yeah no, Chuck, I don't like looking foolish."
"Or maybe—just maybe—I made a choice for the both of us, the right choice, the one that you wanted to make deep down but wouldn't because you still see me as the Nerd Herd supervisor at the Burbank Buy More, the loser who can't take care of himself, and you care about me and don't want to see me getting hurt on this potentially very dangerous mission! Maybe you're doing what you tend to do in situations that make you emotionally uncomfortable." He paused dramatically as her hands fell to her sides limply. "You run away. You hide."
"Oh, that is not fair!" she snapped, poking him in the chest again. "And you know it's not fair but you have some...bug up your ass for some reason and you're gonna say it anyway. Don't even try to argue with me. I can see it in your face. You wear everything on your sleeve still, Chuck, just like you always have."
He grabbed his sleeve and shook it violently. "Oh, good! Great! Then maybe you can look at my sleeve and read that I can read your sleeves, too!"
"What?" She pulled her chin back with a what the fuck look.
"Yeah, that's right! I see you, Agent Sarah Walker. I see behind that mask of yours. You are every bit as concerned about Hannah's family as I am. The only reason you didn't make that same promise to Nicolas is because your training is deeply ingrained in you."
"Yeah! Welcome to being a spy, Agent Carmichael!"
"Well, welcome to being a real human being, Sam!"
There was silence in the kitchen then, and he felt the fire in his chest spreading down his arms, down his legs, up into his head, making him feel the heat rising up from his shirt collar—a different heat from the one he'd felt from climbing those six flights of stairs.
Her blue eyes flashed as her mouth fell open a little, as though she couldn't believe he'd just said what he'd said. The name he'd just used. And a part of him wondered if maybe that was why Sarah'd never given him her real name. She had given it to someone else first, and that guy hadn't just thrown it back in her face the way he had.
"This…" She pointed down at the floor. "This has fuck all to do with being a human being. You left me hanging out to dry, Chuck. You trapped me in a shitty corner! Because you didn't have the amount of respect for your partner required to talk to her before you made a decision for the both of them. It felt like getting punched in the face!"
"I already apologized for that, okay?! I made a bad decision, not telling you I'd changed my mind first before I turned in that report to Shaw and Beckman! I admit that!"
"Good!"
"But you need to also admit something." He moved in closer, their chests brushing. And she held her ground, lifting her chin, straightening her spine. "You're the ultimate spy, Agent Sarah Walker, doing what's best for the mission, hardening yourself to the worst parts of the job, getting the work done, compartmentalizing… But underneath all of that, you have the same misgivings about leaving the Lius to their fate as I do. Admit it."
"Yeah, I'm not a monster!" she groused, throwing her hands up.
She tried to move away, across the kitchen, somewhere else, but he reached out and gently put his hand on her bicep, turning her to face him again.
"No, you're not! That's exactly it, Sarah! You're not just 'not a monster', you're a real, living human being. You care about people, you care about more than just...what happens to me. You care about that family's safety as much as I do!" She looked up into his face, her face hard with stubbornness. "You want to go on this mission as much as I do. You want to save those people as much as I do. Deep down you're glad I got Beckman to go along with it, which is why you went so far as to tell Agent Shaw you're real name to get him to agree to letting us go. You might not be happy about how I did it—and I'll grant you that. You're right about that. I did the wrong thing there and I'm sorry. It was backhanded. But you want this mission, as dangerous as it might be for both of us." He leaned in close. "Because Sarah Walker, you're not just capable of warmth and empathy and kindness and love; that is who you are. That's who you are, Sarah Walker. And until you let yourself realize that, you and I are going to keep going 'round and 'round and 'round in circles. So just admit it!" he practically spat out at her. "Admit that you're an incredible person. With a soul that aches to help other people just as much as mine does. With a heart that's just as big as mine."
He stopped then, and he took a few deep breaths, his chest heaving. And he just stared at her.
She stared right back at him, their faces inches apart, the silence in the kitchen absolutely deafening.
Later, he'd think back to that split moment and wonder what the trigger was, if he'd seen anything in particular in her face, and what that was. And still, even with hindsight, he'd have no answer...
Because at the same time they'd each seen something in the other, and the electricity-filled air between them sparked, the flame had engulfed them both, and they'd snapped together like a rubber band being pulled tight and let go.
Sarah's hand had clamped down on his arm and yanked him as he stepped forward and their lips crashed together almost a little painfully. He ignored that, though, wrapping her up in his arms, hearing his jacket he'd been holding fall to the floor at their feet.
They kissed one another in a way that was different from the other times. He felt a deep, shared knowledge of what this was, of what was happening. And while there was desperation in the way she slipped her fingers up into his thick curls and held on, this wasn't desperate.
He felt as much relief in her as he felt, even as she grappled for the hem of his shirt and pulled it up his torso. He broke the kiss for just long enough to help her tug the shirt off of him, lifting his arms over his head. When it was gone, he dove back in, kissing her neck, the crook of her shoulder, back up again to just under her jaw.
Sarah began to pull him away from the counter, out of the kitchen and towards the hallway. And he cupped her face, kissing her passionately again, filled with the need to taste her in a way he hadn't gotten to before this. All the times before, it had felt like time was almost up, like someone had turned over an hourglass above their heads and the sand was sifting down faster and faster.
They stopped abruptly and he glanced up just long enough to see that she'd accidentally backed herself into the doorframe that led into the hallway. She squeaked, and he swallowed her giggle in a kiss. When said giggle became a moan, that fire in him roared.
Before he could do anything about it, though, Sarah lunged forward and pushed until his back crashed into the doorframe opposite. She grabbed onto the frame with both hands and leapt up against him so that he was forced to catch her. She wrapped her legs around him and encircled his neck with her arms, pressing her lips against his, opening her mouth in invitation.
He accepted the invitation gladly, blindly making his way down the hallway. He just barely got his hand out in time to avoid walking her into the wall again, breathing a whimpered, "sorry" against her lips. She broke the kiss with a massive grin and a, "S'okay", before she dove back in to kiss him again.
Somehow she got rid of her shirt before they even got into the bedroom, and any semblance of sense went straight out of his mind.
He didn't look at the bedroom around him, the placement of the bed being the only thing he cared about now.
And then he heard the quiet sound of a zipper and the rustling of denim and cotton, before he felt her hand against him, and the world fell away.
Still, as they left a trail of the rest of their clothes leading to Sarah's bed, Chuck paused before he draped her over it, sliding his hands up to cup her face, just taking her in for a long moment...long enough that she almost seemed to start getting impatient.
And he breathed a quiet, "Yes?"
His meaning seemed to hit her then and warmth swept over her face. She nodded. "Yes, Chuck."
The snap happened again, and this time it was so powerful and intense that they barely made it under the covers of her bed before it began.
And for the first time since he opened that damn email from his ex-best friend so many months ago—perhaps for the first time since he was a kid listening to his dad try to explain where his mom had gone, and why she wouldn't be home for dinner—Chuck felt a sense of safety and comfort and relief and pure, unadulterated peace wrap itself around him and hold him tight. He threw away all pretenses, shrugged off self-consciousness that seemed to dog his every step, and gave in to the love he had for this truly singular person he'd longed for since the moment they'd met.
A/N: Uh, SC...not to be crass but….they're having the sex, right?
Please review and let us know what you think about these developments. Thanks!
-SC and DC