A/N: So, what's going on with Chuck early in our story? Let's find out. That, and more. — Hang on!
Oh, one formal feature to be prepared for. Most of the story is told in straight POV, either Sarah's or Chuck's, but certain crucial sections will shift to a dual POV, and will shift rapidly from Sarah to Chuck, Chuck to Sarah, and (occasionally) to a distinct narrator's voice.
That happens here at the beginning of Sarah and Chuck's dinner date and continues until almost its end.
The Missionary
Under blue moon I saw you
So soon you'll take me
Up in your arms, too late to beg you
Or cancel it, though I know it must be
The killing time, unwillingly mine
In starlit nights I saw you
So cruelly you kissed me
Your lips a magic world
Your sky all hung with jewels
The killing moon will come too soon
Fate
Up against your will
Through the thick and thin
He will wait until
You give yourself to him
Echo and the Bunnymen, The Killing Moon
Chapter Two: The Killing Moon
Chuck wiped his forehead, then took a deep drink from the water bottle Morgan brought him.
They were standing in the Buy More break room, recovering from taking down the back-to-school signs and hanging up new sales signs. Of course, Chuck had been the one inside, actually hanging the signs — Morgan had been outside, supervising.
But Chuck could not get himself much to care about the unequal division of labor. First, because it was always that way; Morgan never actually worked. And second, because he was going to dinner with Sarah Walker in a little over an hour.
He looked at his watch again. 5:50 pm. But as he looked at his watch, for the third time that day the watch face seemed to swim, as if the hands of the watch were spinning, a windmill caught in a tornado. Overbalanced, dizzied by the movement, he had to put down his water bottle and sit down in a chair. The break room was a whirling dervish.
Breathing slowly, in and out, helped. He reached for the water bottle and put it, cold, against his forehead. The dervish room slowed its dance. He glanced at his watch; the face was still and legible. 5:53 pm.
His head had felt strange since he woke up. Swollen.
Of course, he woke up on his desk chair, not in his bed. Yesterday had been his birthday, and he had managed to convince his sister, Ellie, not to throw a party. He did not feel like a party. Especially since, knowing his sister as he did, he knew the majority of the guest list would be women, friends of Ellie's, all chosen with hope as potential love interests for Chuck. But Chuck just wasn't interested. For his first three birthdays after college, that had been because he was still heartsick about Jill Roberts, his Stanford girlfriend. He had tried to put her out of his heart, but it had taken him a long time. He had finally done it. Last year, Chuck did ask one of the women at his birthday party out, and they dated a few times before Chuck realized that she and he were not a good fit. She wanted someone more ambitious than Chuck; Chuck wanted someone more interested in a home. They had parted ways amicably enough.
After that, Chuck had dated a few women of his own choosing, and one of Morgan's. The ones he chose were all pleasant and likable, but two of the three had been aspiring actresses, and the other had been a tattoo artist. The first two had heads full of stars, and of the stars they would be. The third had so many snakes tattooed on her arms that being embraced by her made Chuck feel like Indiana Jones trapped in the Well of Souls. Chuck had nothing against tattoos, but hers seemed to be crawling on her and threatening to crawl on him.
The woman Morgan had chosen had shown up at Chuck's apartment in an overcoat — only in an overcoat, it turned out. She showed him that seconds after he opened the door. "Since we're going to sleep together, I thought we might as well do it first, that way dinner won't make us too fat and sleepy for good sex." Chuck had immediately paid for her an Uber ride home. He never understood what she had planned to wear — or not to wear — to dinner.
Morgan had gone on for weeks about looking a gift horse in the mouth. Actually, he hadn't said 'mouth'.
Chuck put the water bottle on the table and rubbed his temples.
He woke up in his desk chair because he had gone to sleep in it. That was not something he did. But when he had finished watching TV with Ellie and Devon, Chuck had been putting on his pajamas when a notification sounded on his phone. He looked at it. It was an email from Bryce Larkin.
Chuck knew he had stared at his phone for five minutes because the screen eventually went black, and he had set the phone to turn off the screen after five minutes of inactivity. Chuck put his phone down and pulled out his desk chair. Seated, he called up his email on his desktop computer.
There really was an email from Bryce.
Chuck had not had any communication with Bryce in over five years. The last time he had seen Bryce, spoken with him, had been near the door of their frat, as Chuck carried the last of his belongings out of his room and to Ellie's car.
"You did this to yourself, Bartowski." Those had been Bryce's oracular final words. But Chuck had done nothing, so he had done nothing to himself. The Stanford disciplinary board had expelled him for cheating — but he had not cheated. True, answer keys to tests were found beneath Chuck's bed, but he had not put them there. He had never cheated, never helped anyone else to cheat. He did not need to cheat. Even Stanford came easy to him. He had been on track to graduate summa cum laude in just a few weeks when the board excommunicated him. He had protested but no one believed him. Later, he was appalled to discover that it had been Bryce who found the tests under his bed, and who had reported him to the disciplinary board. A few days after that, he got a letter from Jill Roberts telling him that they were done and that she was now dating Bryce. Chuck crashed from a summa cum laude diploma to a Dear John letter. He had hidden in his room for several weeks, helplessly enraged and hopelessly lost, so humiliated he could barely lift his head.
The wheels had fallen off his life.
Ellie eventually rolled him back into the world, forcefully, but he went no farther into it than to the Buy More. Morgan worked there, and even though Chuck had no Stanford diploma, he had actually been at Stanford — and that made him wildly overqualified for the Buy More. Big Mike, the manager, had hired him on the spot. The Buy More got Chuck out of his room but it had not gotten him out of hiding; he just changed hiding places.
And Chuck had hidden there for a long time.
Ellie charged him modest rent for his room. What he made at the Buy More was not enough for him to build any net worth, but he could afford to pay his rent, buy his share of the food, pay his part of the utilities, and still have enough left over to occasionally eat out with Morgan or to buy new music.
But Chuck was tired of hiding at the Buy More, tired of living two weeks at a time.
It had taken him too long to recover from Stanford, from Bryce and Jill, but he believed it had finally happened. For the last few months, he had been feeling different, like he had been resurrected after a long entombment, the stone rolled away. He felt more alive than he had felt before the Stanford debacle.
He had been consulting the help-wanted ads and submitted a resume to an online job service. He was waiting to hear something.
He had even picked up course catalogs for a couple of local colleges. He was thinking about the future for the first time in a long time. If he could find a better job, he could move out.
It was past time to get past himself, time to build the life he wanted.
Chuck opened the email Bryce sent him. And then…what?
Chuck now couldn't remember. He hadn't realized that he couldn't remember.
All he could remember was waking up, his monitor black.
Morgan was pounding on his bedroom door; they were supposed to ride together to the Buy More. Chuck had looked up at his clock — it was 10:30 am and they were due to clock in at 11 am. Panic set in. Without thinking about Bryce or his email, Chuck had vaulted from his chair and dashed out the door, past Morgan, into the shower.
A few minutes later, his hair still dripping onto his white shirt collar, he and Morgan had been speeding toward the store.
Chuck's first attack of dizziness had come on the way to the store, now that he thought about it. A limousine had cut them off, and while Morgan screamed obscenities at the license plate, Chuck's head seemed to expand and contract. He had a sudden, vivid vision of a motorcade, a line of limousines, flanked by police motorcycles, sirens flashing…
And then the vision was gone. His head stabilized in size, the limousine that cut them off moved on, and Chuck drove them to the Buy More.
Once inside, Big Mike had pulled Chuck aside, grabbing his arm with jellied fingers and whispering through powdered sugar lips: "Need you to run the sales floor today, Chuck. I've got corporate forms stacked up to the ceiling."
Chuck knew that meant Big Mike had more donuts demanding attention, but he did not contradict his boss. Chuck ran the sales floor practically every day unless someone from corporate was actually in the store. When he ran the floor, things went better.
But he had no more than wiped Big Mike's jelly prints from his arm when a truck arrived, full of new products, and Chuck had to both run the floor and make sure Morgan and the others got the truck unloaded. He'd had to frantically divide his attention between the front and the back of the store, and he spent the middle of the day feeling slightly schizoid, sometimes Front Chuck, sometimes Back Chuck, like multiple personalities.
It had been when he was hurrying from a final check of the truck back to the sales desk that he had his second attack of dizziness. Off to the side, the wall of TVs was playing, as usual. Normally, Chuck kept their volume low, only turning individual sets up when customers wanted to hear one. But Morgan had one of the sets blaring, and was seated in a recliner, watching. What was blaring was George C. Scott's famous speech as Patton, from Patton.
Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. Now, I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost and will never lose a war. Because the very thought of losing is hateful to Americans.
Morgan grinned at the screen, holding the remote in both hands. Chuck grabbed the remote and turned to lower the volume when he had another vision.
Chuck's head seemed to swell, the screen, Patton, Scott, went watery, and then he saw a man in uniform, a real soldier not an actor, and bedecked in ribbons. Chuck felt like he knew the man, knew the man's name, but he also knew he had never seen the man before. Still, the man did not seem a figment of Chuck's imagination — the vision did not seem imaginary — the man seemed like someone he remembered. But how? And then his head contracted and the vision was gone. Chuck lowered the volume and wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist, the remote still in his hand.
But this latest dizziness had come with no vision.
Or was that right? He realized that the spinning watch hands had stopped for a moment, that in the midst of the whirling, a time had been shown to him. 11 pm. He had a vision of his watch as he looked at his watch.
He was tempted to go home, and look at that email from Bryce again. — Why couldn't he remember it? Chuck would have attributed all the dizziness and all the visions to Sarah Walker, except that he had two of them before he knew she existed. But maybe the earlier episodes were signs that she was coming, like in fantasy novels or horror movies. Or in Revelations — Signs of the Apocalypse.
Chuck said the last bit to himself in his internal James Earl Jones voice.
Chuck drank the last of the water from the bottle and laughed at himself. The truth was probably nothing more than that he had stayed up too late, slept in a twist in his desk chair, and woke up tired and sore, maybe with a pinched nerve or something. He could ask Ellie about that when he saw her.
He looked at his watch again, hesitantly, but it looked and acted normally. It was after 6 pm. He had some clean clothes in his break room locker. He would go out and take one last turn around the sales floor and then clock out, wash up a bit, and put on the clothes.
He stood up and looked at his hands. They were shaking a bit.
He was nervous, but he was also excited. He had never met anyone who stirred him the way Sarah Walker had stirred him earlier in the day. Strangely, he felt equal to that stirring.
This was one date he was determined not to mess up. Surely, it was his turn for a date to work out.
Sarah opened the heavy suitcase she had known would be beneath the bed in her apartment. Keys to the room had been held for her by the doorman, and he gave them to her when she showed him her driver's license.
The apartment had struck her when she entered.
In DC, her room had been bare. No pictures, no nicknacks, almost no decorations of any kind. Her furniture was plain. The only decoration, if you could call it that, was her cactus. Once, on a rare whim (Sarah did nothing on a whim), she had bought a potted cactus from a man selling them on the street, selling them out of a torn, taped cardboard box. The small, green, prickly thing, all alone in its pot, had an effect on her, although she was not sure what the effect was. She bought it and she brought it home and she stood it atop her small, empty bookcase.
It was still there, and still alive, but only because neglect was natural to it. Now and then, she noticed it and she poured in a bit of water. It grew slowly — mainly, it seemed to multiply its thorns.
This apartment was the same green as her cactus in DC. But it was ornate in a hard-to-name way, as if an interior decorator had tried to create a slightly foreign feel, but had never decided what foreign country or region was supplying the inspiration. Sarah did not spend any time considering it, since it was likely that tonight was the only time she would use it.
The suitcase contained a sniper's rifle, disassembled, two handguns, ammunition for the rifle and handguns, silencers for all the guns, a calf holster of throwing knives, a tranquilizer gun, and an ample supply of darts.
Having met Bartowski, Sarah did not need any excess weaponry. She would take her knives — she always felt them missing when she did not have them above her ankle — and she would take a handgun and silencer. She would take them primarily on the chance that John Casey might get to LA early. That was quite unlikely, but it was good to be ready for all eventualities. If all went as planned, she would go to dinner with Bartowski, soften him up, coax him into her car, drive to someplace deserted, and, instead of giving him the sex she would make him expect, she would interrogate him, force him to tell her about the Intersect, demand he take her to it.
Once she secured the Intersect, she would terminate Bartowski, quick and painless, call the cleaners. Graham would have a team ready, he knew the drill, knew how she worked. She would vanish from LA. In a day, she would be back in DC.
Mission accomplished.
In two days, she would be in some foreign country, on a new mission.
She looked at her watch. It was 6:10 pm.
She could drive to the Buy More in ten minutes, so she decided to shower. Once in the shower, she decided to shave her legs. When she got out of the shower, she moisturized. The shower and the self-care made her feel less tired.
She had been tired a lot lately. What she told the woman on the plane wasn't a lie. That part, at least. Flying did not make Sarah nervous. But she did feel tired.
She looked at her hands — steady. Thank God.
The apartment closet contained some choices of clothes, all in her size. She squeezed into a pair of black jeans and donned another, but lighter blue top, a pair of black laced shoes, something she could move in. She strapped the knives on her calf, then rolled down the leg of her jeans, and she slipped the gun into her handbag after checking it, loading it, and setting the safety.
She stood and looked at herself in the mirror. She decided to put on some jewelry, so she took the small leather bag from her purse and chose a gold necklace, delicate, and a blue ring she had long been fond of. It matched her top, her eyes.
She had left her hair down, not put it back in the ponytail. That too was part of drawing Bartowski in, making him feel comfortable.
She took a deep breath. She wished she had not had that Patient Zero conversation with Bartowski, wished that he had never sung to her, or told her he had dreams, small ones.
Tonight, she would rob him of every dream, big or small, and every song. A man so alive would be dead.
In the mirror, her eyes stared at her like they were someone else's, and she looked away.
Chuck saw Sarah behind the wheel as the car pulled to the curb in front of the Buy More. He knew Morgan was watching from inside. Morgan refused to go home until he was sure that Chuck's date really happened. After all, Morgan had noted, Chuck once put a nearly naked girl in a Uber instead of sleeping with her. Clearly, Chuck could not be trusted.
Sarah leaned forward to look at Chuck through the passenger window. He leaned down and waved at her before he opened the door. She waved back. When she did, he had a moment of dizziness again, and he saw her face, but not smiling, her lips a hard line, her eyes beyond appeal.
And then her face in his mind was gone, and he could see only her face in the car.
He shook his head and opened the door. "Hello, Sarah Walker. Punctual, I see." He slipped into the car, smiling crookedly at her and grabbing the seatbelt. "I had a philosophy professor in college, a funny guy. He used to joke about 'middle-class anxieties concerning promptness'. He claimed that even Martin Heidegger had those anxieties and that Heidegger's big book was mistakenly entitled, Being and Time. Heidegger meant for it to be entitled Being on Time."
Chuck finished as he clicked his seatbelt, looking down to make sure he was getting it right, and when he looked back up, Sarah was staring at him in confusion. "Heidegger?"
"Oh, sorry, I guess Heidegger's not dinner conversation. Not any conversation really. — Is it too much if I tell you that I am nervous and excited, that I'm really looking forward to tonight?" He was still trying to forget his vision of her face. What the hell is wrong with me? I've never seen this woman before today. I would know it if I had.
Sarah laughed. "No, that's not too much. That's nice, Chuck, a genuine, if indirect, compliment." It is. Stop being so nice.
"Where should we go, Chuck? I'm the new girl, you're the local guy."
Chuck nodded, making a face of exaggerated thoughtfulness. "Well, maybe I should ask first if you are planning for this to be an early night or a late one?"
Sarah drew back but smiled. "Isn't that a smidgen presumptuous of you? Maybe I want to decide on that during the night."
"Right. No, I didn't mean it like that. Really. I just meant that where we go, what we plan, should be sensitive to how tired you are. New in town, new apartment, new laptop, I imagine you are tired, so I'll completely understand if you are hoping for an early night. There are some good places nearby, and some better places farther away. Your call. We'll get a good meal either way, but we could have an exceptional one."
Sarah thought about her actual plan for the evening. Bartowski's last meal. "Why don't we plan on a late night, — with the proviso that the lady can change her mind?"
Chuck nodded to her and gave her a smile that made her forget her plan for a moment. Please don't smile like that again. I'm your executioner, not your girlfriend.
"That proviso is always in place. Just let me know. But if we can plan on a late night, let's head to a Mexican place I know. It'll take a little while to get there but it's worth it; and, on the off chance you might agree to a late night, I called just before you drove up and reserved a table for us."
"Well, aren't you thinking ahead? Okay, Chuck, point the way."
Chuck told her how to leave the parking lot, and which direction to take. Sarah maneuvered them into the street. In a moment, she was weaving in and out of traffic, driving at her normal speed.
Sarah saw Bartowski reach for the armrest and saw his knuckles whiten as he gripped it.
"Do you always drive like this, or are you planning to kill me?" Sarah felt her chest tighten. What? But she made herself laugh through the constriction. "I used to live in DC, and I learned to navigate traffic."
He looked at her, his fear half-pretend, half-real. "You call this navigating? It seems like random speed-of-light lane changes. I had no idea this thing had warp drive!"
"What drive?"
"No, warp drive?"
She saw his knuckles loosen as she reduced speed a bit. She laughed at him, a genuine laugh. "I might as well be driving my grandmother!"
Chuck was staring ahead but he spoke, asked a question. "What was your grandmother's name?"
"Irene," Sarah said without thinking, telling Bartowski the truth. Dammit. What am I doing? He doesn't need to know that. I certainly don't need to tell him.
"Irene — that means peace, right? What a great name. Peace. Did you know her well, drive her often?"
Sarah remembered without wanting to remember: driving her grandmother to chemo, sitting in the waiting room, waiting, waiting, glossy magazines and matte walls. With each visit, her grandmother's skin became more translucent, as if her grandmother were literally fading from sight. Sarah had gone to stay with her the summer of Sarah's sixteenth year, when her grandmother's health was too bad for her to drive or walk without fear of falling. Her grandmother died in August; Sarah went back to her dad, rejoining him in his cons the next day, feeling like she had faded too.
"I lived with her when I was little, and again later, when I was older, just before cancer took her." Shut up, Sarah, shit.
Chuck turned from the windshield to face her. She glanced at him, and he again sensed that he had seen her before. Her face was familiar, familiar in a way that meeting her earlier in the day did not explain. He had no idea what was wrong with him. How could sleeping upright in a computer chair throw me this far off? Maybe it was the lavender teddy?
"I never knew my grandparents, either side, not really," Chuck said. "My mom's parents died when she was young, not long before she married my dad. And my dad and his dad — well, let's say they didn't see eye to eye. I guess they visited me as a baby, and my sister can sort of remember them, I can't; they only visited that one time, and dad and granddad fought, and, well, that was that." Chuck gave Sarah a sad smile — she returned it.
"Sorry, Chuck. My grandmother was — let's just say she was the best part of my childhood, although I didn't understand that until later." Stop talking. She felt like whatever was causing her hands to shake had traveled up her arms, and relocated to her mouth. I don't share.
They were both silent for a few minutes.
Sarah sped up again, a little, her frustration with herself bubbling over, and wanting the drive to end. Always, she was the one directing seductions; she understood the techniques; she knew all-too-well what her marks wanted.
Even though she had dialed back the suggestiveness when she asked Bartowski out, she had expected Morgan's teddy shenanigans to color the evening, and shape its direction. But he had not looked at her once with lavender in his eyes.
Bartowski seemed interested, — but in her, not her body. But if his mind was not firmly lodged between her legs, she was not sure how to play the seduction out.
The men she seduced had never really asked her questions about herself. Sometimes they pretended to, they said the words, but it was clear that the point was to manipulate her, not to learn anything about her. They certainly hadn't asked about her grandmother — or reminded Sarah that her grandmother's name meant peace.
Peace.
And now that word was stuck in Sarah's head. Her grandmother was stuck in her head. What would she think of me? The woman I am? — Who am I kidding? She'd be horrified.
Thinking during missions was a bad idea. Remembering was worse.
Sarah tried to make herself stop remembering. She needed the conversation to move to safer ground, while still seeming relevant to what they'd been talking about.
"So, you mentioned your sister?"
"Yeah, right, I have a sister, Ellie. She's great. I live with her and her boyfriend, Devon — aka Captain Awesome."
"Captain Awesome?"
Chuck grinned. "I don't mean it in a mean way. It's just that he's, like, perfect, handsome, smart, sweet. He does everything with distinction, awesomely."
Sarah laughed. The nickname struck her as funny.
Chuck continued. "I live with them, actually, although I'm making plans to move out. I just need to find a new job. But I only just started looking. — Oh, there's our turn. We're almost there."
Sarah parked the car in the lot of the Mexican restaurant. El Compadre — just her luck, a name that meant, basically, the friend.
Peace, friendship.
Betrayal.
Chuck got out of the car quickly, while Sarah was leaning forward, reading the sign. In a flash, he was around the front and at her door. He opened it for her.
Sarah's mind returned to high school. There, in braces, with ill-fitting thrift-store clothes and a Great Clips haircut, always, always the new girl, she had desperately wanted to date but never been asked. She sat in classes and daydreamed, wondering what it would be like to be courted.
She felt courted now, for a moment, and her breath caught as Bartowski extended his hand to help her from the car. She knew he knew it was unnecessary; that was what made the gesture special.
She reached out for his left hand with her right.
Chuck looked down at Sarah's hand as it settled in his, and he saw the blue ring she was wearing. This time, there was no dizziness, just a laser-etched, technicolor vision: a woman's hand, wearing that ring, wrapped around a handgun.
The muzzle was pointed forward, as if at him. The gun fired.
And then the vision vanished. But it left Chuck frozen, panicked. What the hell?
Sarah felt Bartowski's hand wrap around hers, warm and gentle — then he squeezed it, hard; she saw him shut his eyes, and take a sudden breath. Her reflex was to coil herself, to brace for an attack. But none came. She quickly shifted posture. Chuck blinked and took a step back, relaxing his grip on her hand. But he was staring at her ring.
"I'm so sorry," he said, pulling his eyes from the ring and up to her face, "I've been having dizzy spells today." He swallowed, took a moment, and seemed to rally. "I slept…strangely…last night. And I haven't eaten much today. Too busy at work. A supply truck came in."
She saw his eyes move to her hand again, and she took it from him, trying to make the movement natural. "Let's get you inside and get you something to eat."
Bartowski gave her an uneven, apologetic grin. "Yes, let's." He turned toward the restaurant but then looked up, into the sky. It had grown dark as they drove, and despite the LA light pollution, the moon hung heavy and visible above them, full.
"Hey, look, I forgot, tonight's a blue moon."
"What's a blue moon, Chuck? Just looks like the moon to me, the same color."
He huffed a soft laugh. "It is. A blue moon isn't blue, typically. It's the second full moon in a month. A rarity. Hence the phrase, 'once in a blue moon'." He turned to her, the smile disappearing from his face. "Do you think it's a sign, a portent? Meeting someone like you…having you ask me out…being here with you…it all seems like it has a meaning that I can feel but that escapes me."
Sarah gazed up at the moon. It seemed to be staring at her, judging. The weight of what she was planning settled on her. For a moment, she felt suffocated.
But her training took over. She reached for Chuck's hand. "I don't know, Chuck. Maybe it's just the dizziness talking?"
He looked at her for a moment, a deep uncertainty in his gaze, but then he shook his head. "Probably, probably." He took a step but then stopped again, still holding her hand. "Do you know that song, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Killing Moon?"
For the second time that day, Bartowski sang to her.
Under blue moon I saw you,
So soon you'll take me…
The lyrics overwhelmed her; the suffocation returned. She could not manage a full breath until he stopped singing.
Chuck hadn't thought of that song in a long time. The blue moon must have brought it on. The killing moon. The title seemed to echo inside him.
Sarah slipped her hand from Bartowski's and caressed his forearm. She needed to reestablish control — of Bartowski, of the evening, of herself. "Let's eat."
The hostess led them to their table and seated them.
Chuck sat down, trying to clear his mind. The moon outside had been slowly eclipsed by Sarah's ring in his imagination. He had a feeling of impending…something. But definitely a feeling of impending. He began to worry that Morgan had put something in the water bottle. After all, Morgan had sent that woman to Chuck, the flasher. Morgan was desperate for Chuck to put Jill behind him, completely, and Morgan thought that would not happen until Chuck slept with someone else. "Erase her, Chuck." Maybe he drugged me, hoping to loosen me up? As much as Chuck hated to admit it, it was possible.
But that would not explain the dizziness before Chuck drank the water. Fate was cruel: Chuck meets the woman to end all women, the woman, and he ends up sick on their first date.
That had to explain it: some kind of bug, a virus, hopefully short-lived. Sleeping in the desk chair must've brought it on, his stressful, exciting day steadily worsened it. Maybe I should just ask Sarah to take me home? He pondered that. Prudence declared it the best plan. But then Sarah smiled at him from across the table. Let's wait and see. Maybe I do just need to eat.
Sarah was trying to understand the shift in Bartowski's mood. That blue moon, that song, had made him pensive, self-involved. He was looking at the menu without seeing it. When he finally looked up, she smiled at him and he gave her a small smile back.
Inside, out from under the moon, she could breathe again. Control seemed like it was returning. Now the goal was to lighten the mood, make Bartowski comfortable, and then to slowly arouse him, to raise him to a fever pitch, to make sure he wanted the date to end in one and only one way.
The waiter came and they ordered.
Sarah ordered a margarita with her meal, but Bartowski chose water. That was too bad, but she could not encourage him to drink since she knew he had been dizzy. He would wonder why she was encouraging him. She would have to do the job without the aid of alcohol.
"So, Sarah, you know what I do. What about you? You've just moved to town. Do you already have a job or have one lined up?"
This was a question she was ready for. "Actually, work is why I'm here. I have a government job, too boring to describe. I asked for a transfer to the LA office when I heard they needed someone. I was sick of DC winters, and it worked out."
Bartowski nodded. "I've never been out of California to speak of, but I can't imagine long, cold, wet winters. I'm all for golden sunshine."
"And blue moons," Sarah added with a short laugh.
Bartowski smiled but did not join in her laughter. His eyes fell on her right hand. "That's a distinctive ring."
Sarah wanted to kick herself. She hadn't needed jewelry to do what she was going to do tonight. She had no idea why she chose to put it on. Her hair, her blouse, her tight jeans, and the memory of that teddy would have been sufficient. Gilding the lily was unnecessary — and Ockham's Razor applied to spying, to covers, as much as to anything else: do not multiply entities beyond necessity.
Sarah made herself leave her hand on the table despite her urge to hide it, the ring. "Yes, it is. I'm not sure it's pretty, but it's interesting."
Bartowski was staring at it, transfixed. Sarah looked from him back to the ring. Her father had given it to her the last time she saw him, two years ago. She had to travel to Vegas to bail him out of jail, his con gone wrong. He had bought the ring as part of the con, as a gift to the woman he was conning, but she had discovered what he was doing before he could give it to her. He had given it to Sarah instead. It would be wrong to say it had sentimental value to her — Sarah did not do sentimental value, but she had kept it and she wore it often.
She had never wondered why that was until now. They both stared at the ring for a quiet moment. The spell was broken by the arrival of their drinks. Sarah took a long drink of her margarita, much longer than she intended. The alcohol was an immediate balm. But she pushed the drink away. She could not allow herself to drink enough to be affected.
She needed to be coldly sober.
That thought helped her reorient on what she was doing, why she was in this restaurant, with this man.
My mark, my mission. Do your job, Sarah!
She sloughed off the peculiarities of the evening, quit thought. It was time to let habit dictate.
Chuck could not seem to rid himself of the feeling that Sarah's ring had caused.
He felt like the Ghostbusters must have felt, dreading to see the chosen form of the Destructor, just before they caught sight of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.
He took a careful sip of his water, and it steadied him a bit. Sarah was looking at him, studying him. "What?"
"I like you, Chuck," she lied, carefully monitoring Bartowski for a reaction. He flushed and smiled. That seemed to draw him out of himself.
"I like you too," he said in response, but although she was sure he was not lying, she could tell that what he felt was not that simple.
"Did you like my lingerie?"
Bartowski glanced away. Around them, the restaurant was noisy, full of laughter and conversation. When Bartowski glanced back, he took a moment to swallow before answering.
"Is there a safe answer to that question, 'cause neither yes nor no seems safe to me?"
Sarah laughed. She had not expected that response. He was funny, quick. She shoved that thought aside.
"Well," she said, elongating the word, "I think the safe answer is yes. Ever since you saw it, I've been hoping…" She let her sentence trail off, inviting him to complete it for her. He did, although he did not say anything aloud. But she saw the completion in his face just ahead of turning bright red.
"I hope…" she went on, pausing deliberately to make the words he had supplied in his head echo there, "I hope you don't think I'm too forward. It's just that it's been a long time since I met someone who attracted me, you know, that way. I left the teddy on the counter in my bathroom…"
Their food arrived, and Sarah let the conversation lag on purpose.
Chuck had not been able to rid himself of what Sarah's ring made him feel, but Sarah had been able to do it. She'd covered the blue ring with her lavender teddy. Chuck no longer felt dizzy, just excited — and confused.
Though the thought of sleeping with Sarah had certainly crossed his mind, Morgan and the teddy made sure of that, but just seeing her had been enough. But he had no ambition for it to happen tonight or any time soon. One night stands were no part of his life, no part of how he thought about women, his respect for them, for himself.
He looked up at Sarah. She was eating but looking back at him. He grinned. "No, I don't think you are too forward, but…"
As he tried to decide what to say, he felt her slide her leg along his beneath the table. "Good," she said softly, "now, let's eat. We need to make sure you're over the dizziness…"
Chuck had seen sexy scenes in movies, of course, read them in books, but he had never lived one, not like this.
Sarah suddenly radiated sex. It splashed against him in warm waves, lapping, maddening. They talked, but somehow the talk was never to be about what it seemed to be about. Every sentence felt like foreplay. She kept her leg against his, kept a gentle pressure there.
He kept trying to find a way back to normal conversation, but somehow she prevented it. He could feel her effect on him. Her eating itself was foreplay, her lips, her tongue. She licked her lips and he whimpered silently.
They were already having sex.
The rest of the meal was a heated blur, the only fixed point her leg against his. When they finished and paid the check, Sarah took his hand and pulled herself against his arm, pressing herself against him.
As they reached Sarah's car, Chuck looked up at the blue moon, the killing moon. And then he wasn't looking at it. Sarah dropped her purse, spun him around, sandwiched him against the driver's side door, and snaked her arms around his neck.
She leaned into him, he heard her sigh, felt her breath against his neck, and then she kissed him, her mouth impossibly warm and wet and soft.
She uncrossed her arms and let her hands trail down his arms, then she put them on his waist.
He should resist. He knew he should resist. There were so many reasons to resist, but they vanished as she opened her mouth and caressed his lips with her tongue.
His tongue met hers and he forgot everything but her. She kissed him hard.
She was irresistible. The sky was hung with jewels.
Sarah finally pulled away from him, panting.
She gazed at him; the moon reflected in her pale blue eyes. It did look blue, reflected there.
"Is there someplace we can go, Chuck? Someplace deserted, nearby. I can't wait to get back to my place. I want you now."
His mind clambered up his body for long enough for him to think of a nearby spot. He nodded. His mind plunged back below his belt.
"Good, let's go!" Sarah said, her voice urgent, brooking no dissent.
Chuck ran around the car and got inside. Sarah threw her purse in the backseat and got in the car at the same time as he did. She started the engine, then reached over and cupped his groin, caressing him.
He moaned involuntarily and saw her smile at the sound.
A/N: And on we go. Next time, Chapter Three: Executioner's Song.
