A/N: Anyone think ownership of Chuck might go to a reunion with ownership of White Collar or Burn Notice? Like a crossover reunion thing?
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Chuck and Sarah met Mark Ratner in front of Brick, a party venue in an old brick industrial building in the Point Lomo neighborhood of San Diego at 6:30. The reunion started at 6:00, but none of them wanted to be the first to arrive.
"Thanks again for coming with me, guys. I really appreciate it," he said gratefully.
"No problem, Mark," said Sarah. "This should be fun." She caught Chuck's eye and quirked an eyebrow with a smile, as if to say 'At least, I hope.' They had made a plan to leave early if the people at the reunion were as awful as she remembered them to be, but there was no need for Mark to know about that. The poor guy was still reeling from the revelations about his wife.
They joined the line of people at the reception table. As they got to the front Mark said, "Hi. I'm Mark Ratner."
The pleasant woman at the table wearing a nametag that read 'Marge Wilson,' said, "Sure, Mark. Here you go," handing him his nametag. "And I have Heather's here too."
"She's not coming tonight," he said, without much emotion.
"Oh. I hope she's ok," said Marge.
"Oh, yes. She's just … unavailable," said Mark.
"Oh, ok. Tell her I said hi."
"Sure," said Mark looking uncomfortable.
He stepped aside and Sarah stepped up. "Hi. I'm Jenny Burton."
Marge smiled and looked down to the name tags on the table then stopped herself with a sudden start and looked back up. "Jenny?" She looked shocked.
"Yes, but I need a blank name tag too. You see, I've changed my name to Sarah Walker," Sarah said with a big smile. She looked Marge right in the eyes, as if daring her to comment about that.
A bit flustered, Marge said, "Oh, sure. Right. Right. Here you go." She handed Sarah a blank name tag and a Sharpie. Once Sarah had put her name down, she slapped both name tags onto her dress. She quickly wrote out 'Chuck Bartowski' and handed the tag to Chuck.
"Thanks, Marge. Good to see you again," said Sarah with a smile.
"You too,...Sarah," said Marge.
The three made their way inside and found the bar along one wall. Chuck and Mark ordered beers, while Sarah asked for a glass of white wine.
A woman near the bar wearing a name tag reading 'Mag Swolins' looked at Sarah and said, "Jenny Burton? Hi, I'm Mag. I guess you are going by Sarah Walker now?" When Sarah nodded, Mag laughed and said, "Well, I'm still going by Mag."
"Hi," said Sarah. "You remember Mark? And this is my fiancé, Chuck Bartowski."
"Hi, Mark. Did I hear that you married Heather Chandler?"
"Yeah. She didn't make it tonight," he said.
Mag didn't look too unhappy that Heather wasn't around. She turned to Chuck and said, "Hi, Chuck. Nice to meet you."
"Nice to meet you too, Mag," said Chuck.
"So, Sarah, did you stay local? Stay in San Diego?"
"I didn't. I was on the east coast for a while, but last year I relocated to LA. Chuck and I live in Burbank now."
They had told Mark to avoid mentioning how he had become reacquainted with Sarah.
"Oh, that's great. Fiancé, you said, so let's see the ring"
Sarah showed her the ring, which led to some oooowws and aaahhhhs.
"How about you, Mag? What are you up to?" asked Sarah.
"I'm a nursery school teacher at the Navy Base. I love the kids. I've got the little ones, you know? Too young to be monsters. But it's exhausting. How about you?"
"Chuck and I just started a cybersecurity company with a couple of friends. Just getting it off the ground now," she said.
"Good for you guys," she said.
"Thanks," said Sarah. Another woman and her husband came over and joined the conversation.
Chuck and Mark got into a conversation that woman's husband about baseball. For a moment, Sarah turned back to the bar to get another glass of wine. A tall, blond haired man approached her and said, "So, my buddies and I checked out the room and picked out the best looking girl. I decided to come over and introduce myself to the girl I'll be waking up with tomorrow." His tag said 'Dick Duffy.'
Chuck and the men he'd been talking to began to turn towards Duffy when Sarah said, "How did your parents know?"
Duffy looked confused and said, "Sorry, pretty lady, I don't know what you mean."
"How did they know that the right name for their son would be Dick?" She said the name with the tone of a playground insult.
He looked momentarily offended, but, seemingly undeterred, reached out and grabbed her ass. He said, "Ah, don't play hard to get."
Chuck mumbled, "Uh oh." The women she'd been talking to a moment before turned with shock to look at Dick Duffy. Silently, Chuck reached out to Sarah and took her empty wine glass from her hand.
Sarah reached behind her to Duffy's hand. Taking it in her one hand, she twisted it hard in an akido kotegaieshi wrist lock and added support with her other hand. He bent at the waist and grunted in pain spilling his beer as pain shot through his arm.
"Ok, ok, I'm sorry. I'm sorry," he gasped, clearly in a great deal of pain. "Get off. Get off."
Mag watched Sarah and smiled. "Way to go, Sarah. You are freaking awesome, honey. Break his hand. Go on. The son of a bitch deserves it."
"Yeah. That prick. Break it," said the other woman. "I've wanted to see that since high school." She bent down til her head was near Duffy's. "You fucking asshole, Duffy. I hope it hurts like hell."
A couple of large men came over to them. One of them said, "Did I hear you call this guy Duffy?"
"Yeah," said Mag. "He came right up and grabbed Sarah's ass. Fucking asshole."
The man turned to his friend and said, "Bob, remember the guy our wives were telling us about? The football guy?"
The other man said, "Oh, you mean the guy who..."
"Yeah, that's the one," he said.
"Same old shit, right? Some people never learn," said the second man shaking his head.
The first man grinned and said, "Maybe the lesson just hasn't been taught properly?"
The other man laughed and said, "You know, that might be."
The first man turned to Sarah and said, "Hi. Sarah is it? Do you mind if my friend and I take it from here? You've given us a wonderful start, but we'd like some fun too."
"Be my guest," said Sarah with a smile.
The large man carefully replaced Sarah's hands with his own, never lessening the pressure on Duffy's wrist. He clearly knew some martial arts and approached the task with skill and confidence.
"Thank you," he said to Sarah. He and his friend marched a reluctant Dick Duffy, still bent over from the wrist lock, out of the room to the street outside.
Mag whooped and said, "You rock, girl. Awesome." She extended both hands above her head for a two handed high five. Sarah laughed and slapped her palms.
After the women hugged and high fived Sarah, grinning and laughing, the conversation around the bar resumed, with some of the women telling Sarah stories about Dick Duffy's misbehavior over the years. Chuck watched the two men come back into the room about ten minutes later. Duffy was not with them. Looking closely, Chuck noticed that both men had scuffed knuckles on their hands and seemed quite satisfied. They caught Chuck's eye and nodded with smiles. He nodded back.
Sarah seemed to be having a nice time with the people she was talking to. One of the husbands and Chuck began a conversation heading in the typical cycle of small talk. How did you end up at the reunion? Where are you from? What do you do? As it turned out, the man was newly hired as the Vice President for Cybersecurity for Western First Bank and showed immediate interest in the activities of Carmichael Industries.
"Who are your clients?" he asked.
"Mostly government agencies at the moment," said Chuck.
"Which ones?" he asked.
"Forestry and Highways," said Chuck.
"Cool. For the government to pick you, you guys must be good."
"We're the best," said Chuck without arrogance, but with calm confidence.
"How much would you charge to do a penetration test of my bank?" That led to a longer conversation about the extent of the test and the various costs to the bank depending on the level and breadth of testing they wanted done. The banker raised his eyebrows and whistled softly at the steep cost, but Chuck's obvious and extensive expertise on computer systems impressed the hell out of him. Chuck made a point of including Mark in the conversation, so the other man didn't feel left out.
The conversation ended with a Carmichael Industries business card changing hands and Chuck expecting a call on Monday morning.
He leaned over to Sarah and whispered, "New client. A bank."
She whispered back, "I was following along. Good job, Sweetie." He gave her a smooch on the cheek, which made her smile.
A cute, small, somewhat buxom woman in oversized glasses approached Sarah and said, "Jenny? Jenny Burton? Oh, I'm sorry, I see you're Sarah now. Hi, I'm Valerie Wolf. I sat next to you in violin class."
Chuck said, startled, "You play the violin?"
Sarah said, "Hi, Valerie. Good to see you. I'd like you to meet my fiancé, Chuck Bartowski. And, you know Mark, I think." Valerie shook hands with both men as Sarah said to Chuck, "Not for ten years. After graduation I never picked up a violin again."
Valerie said, "Hi, Mark. I'm sure you don't remember me, but I sat behind you in advanced calculus."
"Oh, sure. Hi," he said.
She looked a little shy for a moment and said, "I had such a crush on you in school, but I was always too shy to tell you."
"You did?" he asked, clearly shocked.
"Yeah," she said. "My brother was here with me before, but he went home with an upset stomach. He could have told you. I used to talk about you all the time."
"Really? Um, what do you do now?" he asked.
"I'm a Professor of Mathematics at UCLA. How about you?" she asked.
"I'm getting divorced," he blurted. Chuck and Sarah tried not to laugh at that spontaneous declaration.
She smiled and said, "Oh, that's too bad." She didn't look like she thought it was too bad at all.
Sarah and Chuck exchanged a look and Chuck said, "Valerie, we were just going to get something to eat from the buffet. Would you like to join us?"
"Oh, I don't want to intrude," she said.
"No intrusion at all, Valerie. Please join us," said Mark.
"Ok, Mark. Thank you. And please call me Val. All my friends do."
With a big smile, Mark said, "Ok, Val."
Chuck and Sarah smiled at each other behind the backs of the other two and took each other's hands on the way to the buffet.
It was after the meal and some raucous dancing, to all 90's music, that the evening began to break up. A laughing Sarah exchanged contact information with a few of her old classmates. Mark volunteered to drive Val back to her brother's house, so she could avoid calling a cab. A development which made both Chuck and Sarah smile.
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Chuck took off his suit and hung it up in the garment bag. He was just putting the bag into the hotel room closet when he noticed Sarah standing silently in her underwear, looking out the window at the moonlight over the ocean.
"That was more fun than I expected," he said.
She just hummed "Hmmm," in agreement.
Chuck said, "What's the matter?"
She turned from the window to look at him and he saw her tear-stained face. In a flash he was by her side, his hand on her arm. "What's the matter, Sweetie?"
"Nothing, Chuck. Nothing. These are happy tears. Nothing is wrong." She took his hand, pulled him over to the straight-backed chair near the room's desk and pushed him down. Immediately she climbed into his lap facing him, her legs coming around the other side of the chair.
She looked at him with adoration and happiness through her tears and ran both her hands through the curls at the back of his head. "Chuck...when I met you, I was afraid all the time..." Chuck started to speak and she put a finger to his lips to forestall the interruption. "I could face down a warlord or a terrorist or an enemy agent. I could jump out of a plane or into a knife fight. Those things didn't scare me. But having a life. Being a person...a real person with a history...that terrified me. My past...who I was...Who I really was...I couldn't do it, face it. All I was was an agent. Mission to mission, that was comfortable. I wasn't a person with a life. The idea of having a life was … not for me. I could hide as an agent and never think about it, never knowing what I was missing. And then I met the most wonderful man in the world, a man who loves me unconditionally and supports me and that man brings me a family...and friends and gives me the courage to ...well, to go to a high school reunion and talk to people who used to know me. The courage to be more than an agent. I could never ever have done that before. The very idea would have made me nauseous. But with that guy in my life I feel like I can do anything. I can even be a real person."
He looked at her with a goofy smile and made "Mmmm, mmmm, mmmm" noises. She grinned and said, "Ok, you can talk."
"That sounds like a pretty good guy," he said with a smile.
She kissed him long and hard. Pulling away slightly, but still touching him forehead to forehead, she said, "The best. And I love him with all my heart and soul."
He pulled back slightly, mere inches from her face, and his beautiful brown eyes looked at her with love and joy. "But you do know it works both ways, right? I was in a five-year funk. I was doing nothing with my life. I was stuck at the Buy More and spending all my free time playing video games with Morgan. I had nothing. I did nothing. I was nothing. I had a... a … a zombie life, just going through the motions of living. Shambling along. And then the most wonderful woman in the world came into my life and she changed everything for me. Everything. It was like I could suddenly fly like a bird, that's how different things became. Thanks to her, I have a life for the first time in years. A real life. A great life. I have two jobs that I love. I've really helped people and stopped some really bad folks from doing really bad things. I've traveled the world and made friends everywhere. I'm respected for what I do. I'm rich. And the best part of all, this amazing, kick-ass, brilliant, kind, beautiful woman...she loves me. And this wonderful woman is going to marry me and be my wife, and we are going to be together forever. And that makes me so incredibly happy. Happier than I can even put into words. Thank you, Sarah."
"Thank you, Chuck. I love you."
"And I love you."
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A/N2: Brick wasn't in operation until 2014, but I liked it and thought I'd use it anyway.
A/N3: What do you guys think? How'd I do?