Published September 24, 2021

A/N: Morgan knows. Casey doesn't know Morgan knows, but this is when Casey couldn't be trusted. In the show, season 3 & 4 Morgan was useful on Team B. What about now?

davida6 did a better job as beta for this chapter than Morgan did… well, you'll see.

Back of Van
Evening of Friday, March 7, 2008

Morgan sat in the dark van, disappointed that he had failed. It was a bit chilly that night. At least he wasn't cold and depressed, outside the van.

It was a good thing that a few weeks ago, he made copies of all of Chuck's keys, even though he didn't know what some of them were. He thought it was a good idea after the cage incident. He recognized Chuck's pad, even though the Morgan door was easier. He knew the store, the cage, and the Nerd Herder keys. He didn't know a couple. He doubted they were Sarah's place or car. Maison 23 and Porsche keys would be really cool. Now, he knew one of the mystery keys was for this "Custom Eats" spy-van. It was a convenient discovery, because now he had a place to sit out of the cold. The has a place to think about how badly he had messed up, while he waited for Chuck and Sarah to tell him how badly he had messed up

Earlier that day

Morgan could hardly believe it. Everything seemed normal in the Buy More. He supposed things weren't any different than two weeks ago. The difference from two weeks ago was he knew things were different than a year ago. Honestly, they didn't seem that different from a year ago, other than Chuck having a girlfriend. Although, Chuck didn't really have a girlfriend. That was hard to believe. Chuck and Sarah seemed so into each other. Now, Morgan knew things were different because of Sarah. Not because she was Chuck's girlfriend, but because she and Chuck were spies.

Meanwhile, the Buy More kept being the Buy More.

Morgan went to lunch with Chuck. There was no mention of what Morgan learned a couple days ago—just two best buds enjoying Friday surf-and-turf. If things were still normal, maybe Chuck was up for Call of Duty tonight. Back at their lockers in the break room, Morgan asked, "Game night, tonight?"

Chuck put his hand firmly on Morgan's shoulder. "Sorry, Morg. Not tonight."

"Oh, right. It's Friday. Hot date?" Those two were definitely a couple.

Chuck looked back at the door, checking if the room was clear. He quietly said, "You know Sarah and I aren't really dating, but yes."

His friend was still saying he and Sarah weren't dating, after he charged in after her last night. How could they have a hot date if they weren't dating? Ah. No date meant, "Mission?"

"You aren't supposed to know that, but yes. Even if we weren't going on a mission, it would be odd if Sarah and I weren't together on a Friday night…for the cover."

Pretending to date was complicated. With neither he nor Chuck dating, Morgan thought there might be a chance to return to how things were a year ago. Oh, well. "Understood," Morgan said, even though he wasn't sure he did. All he knew was no game night.

Later, Morgan was wandering around near Appliances when his meandering was blocked by a green wall in the shape of John Casey. The wall gruffly said, "Hey, Moron."

After last night, he didn't have to put up with this anymore. "It's Morgan."

The big guy grunted as if to say he'd call Morgan whatever he wanted. "You're not dating Anna now. I'm scheduled to work tonight, but you're not. You can switch with me."

Why would Morgan want to stay at the Buy More? He'd rather be alone on a Friday night. Even though he had no girlfriend, and even though his best friend wasn't coming through for him, he didn't want to be at the Buy More any longer than he had to. "No."

"Why you little," the angry man growled.

Morgan didn't have to listen to this. The big man didn't ask nicely, or really even ask at all. Morgan had helped save the spy's life a week before. Morgan was not going to be intimidated into staying at the Buy More any longer than he had to. He turned and walked away.

A minute later, Morgan was feeling proud of himself for standing up to the big, bad spy when he realized his mistake. Casey didn't know Morgan had helped the other night. More importantly, Casey was asking to get out of work because he was going on the mission with Chuck and Sarah. They'd be on their own. If Casey wasn't there to help, it was up to Morgan to not leave his hetero-life partner and his girlfriend high and dry.

That evening, again

The reason Morgan even had to be on the mission was his own fault. He never should have tried to be a spy. He never should have created the situation that made that necessary.

Morgan's wallowing in the back of the van was interrupted by two people getting into the front seats, Chuck and Sarah. From the driver's side, Sarah noticed Morgan before he had the chance to say anything. "Hi, Morgan."

Chuck jumped in his seat a little at the news they weren't alone. "I didn't see you there, Morg. Hi. What are you doing here?"

"I realized I messed up and tried to help. Instead, I just made things worse. I'm sorry."

Sarah started to drive the van away from the mansion. "It's ok, Morgan. Chuck and I finished the mission successfully. No one was hurt. Overall, it went well. Don't you think so, Chuck?" Sarah sounded happy about the mission that Morgan had screwed up. He thought she must really like missions.

Sarah quickly looked at Chuck before turning back to the road. Chuck stammered, "Yeah…well...yeah...good." It was hard to tell in the dark with only street lights shining in, but was Chuck blushing? Under his breath, he said to Sarah, "I thought you said that was never going to happen again."

Sarah shrugged as she drove. Morgan couldn't really see Sarah's face well from his angle in the back, but was that a little grin?

Chuck tried to talk a couple times, apparently as flustered to Sarah's question as Morgan felt in his failure. The recently-converted-spy asked Morgan, "How did you try to help?"

Morgan said, "Since Casey wasn't going to be here—"

"Sarah told me that we could handle this one without him," Chuck interjected. "And we did."

"It was my fault Casey couldn't get out of work. I should have realized. Anywho, since you had no backup, I thought I'd be your backup."

"Our backup? You're not a spy, Morgan," Chuck said.

"You're not a spy, either, Chuck," Sarah pointed out.

Chuck nodded once to what Sarah said, but paid it no mind. He asked Morgan, "How were you trying to help?"

Morgan revealed the first step in his plan, not that he had a second step. "I needed a reason to be here, so I recruited some help."

"Some help? You didn't tell anyone why, did you?"

"Of course not. Mums the word. To have a reason to be here, I got some of the idiots from the store."

"You didn't…" Chuck has guessed the idiots.

"They have a band," Morgan said.

"A what? A band? That's disturbing on so many levels. At least you didn't tell them why. Of all the people who work at the Buy More, those two are two people that could be completely fooled."

"They weren't the only ones," Morgan admitted.

Sarah said, "Why were Fernando and Harold there?"

Chuck turned to ask Sarah. "How do you know they were there? I didn't know any of them were there. How do you even know who they are?"

Sarah answered the second question first, "It's my job to know everyone you work with. I figured out they were there because I knew Morgan couldn't be working alone and because Casey told me who else he tried to switch with."

Morgan's first mistake was picking that moment to stand up to Casey.

His second mistake was acting too fast, coming up with a plan and recruiting Jeff, Lester, Fernando, and Harold before Casey had a chance to ask Fernando or Harold to switch shifts. Because of that, Casey had to keep working. Then, Casey stopped trying. With Chuck not there, Big Mike left Casey in charge. The man might be hard to deal with sometimes, but he did his duty. The Colonel wasn't going to abandon his post.

The third mistake was getting thrown out of the party during the mission.

Chuck looked back at Morgan, who felt as guilty as ever. "The two of them didn't find out either?" Morgan shook his head no, and Chuck asked, "Why did you get them to help in your scheme? What was your scheme?"

"Since Jeff and Lester were setting up as a band to play as live entertainment for the party, they needed roadies for the sound equipment." Chuck knew Morgan was good at this type of thing from his Mamma Mia experience. He could be a roadie like no other. He could wrangle other roadies.

As Sarah continued driving, she said, "Whatever you did, it worked as a distraction. Security was pulled away from the second floor, where Chuck and I were completing the mission. All we had to do was hide in the closet." She stopped and looked at Chuck again. This time her big smile was obvious. "That worked well, didn't it Chuck?"

Chuck made a couple noises in aborted responses before he said, "I liked that. I just thought…" He trailed off and asked, "What were you doing, Morgan?"

Morgan said, "Our ruse to get into the party didn't hold up. Party security was called to deal with us being there. I thought I blew it again because security came out. I didn't even know where you two were."

Sarah said, "It was ok, Morgan. We hid, and no one discovered us. After a few minutes, we were able to leave our hiding place and complete the mission."

"That's good. Why were you gone so long?" Morgan had been in the van for ten or fifteen minutes, and he didn't even go there for ten minutes more, while the roadies packed up the sound equipment.

Chuck said, "We weren't sure it was clear, so we hid in the closet again before leaving. And…" Chuck didn't finish. It looked like he was embarrassed again. What did he have to be embarrassed about? He was being a spy. Morgan would swear Sarah had a little smile again. Chuck brought it back to Morgan's failure. "How were you discovered?"

"Our t-shirts. I didn't know it was a black-tie party, and…" Morgan stopped and pulled on the bottom corners of his shirt out to show the problem: The shirt logo. Chuck turned on the light in the back so he could get a better look at what Morgan was wearing.

"What's that?"

"It's the logo for Jeff and Lester's band: Jester."

"That's what that's supposed to be? It's a little man with long back hair, and I guess wearing a court jester hood with long points coming out the top. Is that supposed to be Lester? What about Jeff?"

"Yeah, it's Lester. Jeff didn't want to be on the shirt with the two of them pictured as a couple of fools."

"It still had one fool on the shirt," Chuck said.

"I know. I guess they've been arguing about the name. After tonight's aborted performance attempt, they'll probably come up with a new name, combining their names in a different way."

"Your cover was broken because of the t-shirts that had a fool on the front?"

Morgan revealed the other problem. "That, and the other band showed up."

"The other band?"

"For us to be there, the regular band had to be prevented from showing up. We tried the 'banana in the tailpipe' trick from Beverly Hills Cop, but they found the banana and came in another car. That movie didn't warn us that someone else in the band might have a car, so they'd use that instead."

"How did you even find us?"

That was about the only thing that had gone right. He was pretty proud. "LoJack from the spy shop in the plaza." He put a tracker in Chuck's bag. Then Morgan got lucky when Chuck never went home and left it in the van.

Sarah sternly said, "No more tracking us. Otherwise, I'm going to have to scan us for surveillance devices before every mission, and if I find one. you might be treated as a hostile threat."

The wanna-be spy gulped loudly. That sounded serious. He didn't want to be offed when he was only trying to help. Chuck sent up a reassuring look that it wasn't going to happen, but if Casey found out, it might.

Morgan recognized where they were. Sarah was taking him home. Considering he still had a flat tire on his bike, that was one problem solved. He wouldn't have to sleep at the Buy More tonight.

Coming to a stop outside Morgan's mom's house, Sarah said, "Tonight went well. Mission accomplished. In fact, it went really well, but that doesn't mean you should ever do this again, Morgan. We need to talk more tomorrow morning at The Pie Shack. Tonight, I need to debrief Chuck."

"Debrief?" Chuck said in surprise. "I don't know anything you don't. Don't you mean 'brief'? Do you need to tell me something?"

Sarah said in a flat voice. "No. Debrief. You can debrief me, too, back at my hotel room. Good night, Morgan."

Morgan got out of the car. He could be chewed out more tomorrow, because of his screw up.

After Sarah and Chuck drove off, he wasn't sure if Chuck understood that hint about debriefing.

Back in his room, Morgan realized he still didn't understand how this cover thing worked. Debriefing in Sarah's hotel room sounded like a good thing, but maybe "debrief" was code for something. That had to be it. "Debrief" was some code word for Sarah telling Chuck what an idiot his friend was for thinking he could be a spy.

A/N: Disaster avoided. Morgan doesn't get it. Chuck might not either, but Sarah will have time to make it clear before The Pie Shack tomorrow.

Does anyone have a suggestion for Jeff and Lester's band, now that Jester is not a possibility?