A/N: Hold onto your collective BEhinds.

Disclaimer: We make NO money from this and we do not own Chuck.


A few hours later found them in the same position they'd been in the night before. She sat in the chair in the corner of the hotel room, staring at him as he napped on the bed.

And in spite of it being pretty mild outside and not as cold as it had been forecasted, Sarah Walker felt a consistent chill all the way down to her bones.

The visit to the pier had ended up being a bit of a rollercoaster. Not literally. Though Chuck had dragged her onto a ferris wheel, into the funhouse, and to the children's museum. And he'd done so in typical Chuck fashion, with his big grin that wrinkled his nose. His arm was warm and strong around her shoulders on the ferris wheel. They'd shared popcorn and a funnel cake.

And then a kid from one of the other cars on the ferris wheel had dropped a kernel of popcorn on them. Chuck had absolutely lost his mind. His body had gone tight against hers, he'd grabbed the kernel off of his lap, and he'd angrily thrown it back up towards the giggling kids, and he'd been a storm cloud for the next two minutes until the ride let them off. She'd gotten a quick rant from him about "little assholes" whose parents let them do "whatever the fuck they want". She'd tried to calm him with a hand on his arm, and she'd felt his taut muscles under her fingers. Telling him they were just kids and it was just one kernel of popcorn hadn't helped any. He'd just seemed mad at her after that. There'd also been a crying baby behind them in line and he'd glared at both the baby and the parents more than once, which had actually embarrassed her.

And in spite of the general fun he seemed to be having, the almost sociopathic swinging from glaring at men who looked too long in Sarah's direction to the Chuck she'd grown to know over the last year had dampened any amount of enjoyment Sarah might've had throughout their day of sightseeing.

She didn't care that it wasn't enjoyable for her, though. She cared about the little things that made him snap, the way he'd squeezed her hand so tight she'd had to yank away and shake it out to get blood back into it, simply because one of the stall workers had asked the "pretty lady" if she wanted to throw some darts. Like he was constantly on the edge, ready to combust, waiting for someone to give him a reason to attack.

She'd walked around with a powder keg most of the day, and yet somehow the times when he'd been his usual goofball self had made her more uneasy.

Not once did he seem to notice her worry, the way she kept her gaze on him, the way she'd take his arm to try to reassure or comfort him, set him at ease. That scared her too. And it was because she watched him like a hawk that she began to witness concerning signs that he was in pain again, squinting his eyes, clenching his jaw, wincing.

He finally admitted it after hours of playing it off and she took him back to their hotel in a taxi. He fell asleep the second his head hit the pillow in their room. And now here she was, anxious, so worried that her heart was racing. And every beat gave her a throbbing pain in her chest.

She took this opportunity to finally make the call she'd been wanting to make all day, and she grabbed her burner, slipping out into the hallway, just in case Chuck wasn't sleeping as soundly as he appeared to be.

She was outside again by the time she hit send. It was answered abruptly before it got through the first ring.

"Agent Anderson."

"Walker," she replied. "Secure but in public."

"Is he with you?"

"No," she said, feeling absolutely awful. She felt like she was betraying him. She knew she wasn't but in her heart it felt like she was. No secrets no lies kept repeating in her head, over and over and over again. It was Chuck up there in that bed, but something was happening to him, something she couldn't figure out, something she was afraid she didn't know how to—or worse, couldn't—stop. And he had no idea it was happening. She had to keep it that way, just in case. She trusted him with every last fibre of her being, but whatever was happening to the Intersect was making him less...him.

"Sarah...I dunno how to say this so I'll just give it to ya straight. It's bad," Bryce said, not even trying to hide the worry in his voice. She moved to the side, out of the way of passersby, and leaned against the nearest wall, her limbs feeling weak. She didn't say anything, instead looking up at the sky and letting him just speak. "He found it. He found what Chuck saw and he's extremely concerned. It's a virus, Sarah. A computer virus. It's corrupting the Intersect."

"A virus," she repeated slowly. "Just-Just a second. There are...too many people...let me…" She lowered the phone and covered the mouthpiece, shutting her eyes tightly. She didn't understand what that meant really, she just knew it was bad. She'd dealt with plenty of viruses in her time with the CIA, on countless missions. And she knew they could be incredibly serious.

Her legs moved her away from the hotel, across the street, and onto the Northwestern campus. She spotted a bench off to the side from the bookstore, where there weren't any people around, and she made a beeline, sitting down on it and hunching over, bringing the phone back to her ear. "How?" she asked him then, trying to push the shaking out of her voice.

"Someone stuck a virus onto Agent Shaw's file and it's now lodged in the Intersect that is in Chuck's head. Just like it would any other electronic system, a desktop or a laptop, it's fucking with him."

"The Intersect is a computer program, I know that. But...Chuck isn't. He's a human being. How does a computer virus just...leap off of Agent Daniel Shaw's file and worm its way into a human being's brain?"

"Same way that email I sent him a year ago put a government database into his brain in the first place. I don't know how they made the Intersect, Sarah. Coding silly computer games, making my own Tetris? That, I can do. But this is a whole different ballgame. The creator of the Intersect I'm working with could probably answer that, but I'd have no idea what he was even talking about. That's beside the point, though. The important thing is that however it happened, it happened. The virus is corrupting the Intersect in Chuck's head."

Sarah sucked in a long breath and let it out slowly. Chuck depended on her keeping her wits about her. "Okay. So...now we know what it is, what do we do about it?"

"When were you planning on leaving?" he asked after a bit of a pause.

"In the morning." She glanced back towards the hotel, looking for a glimpse of dark, curly hair, or any other sign that Chuck woke up, couldn't find her, and decided to look. "Bryce, what is it doing to him?"

"Um, my, uh, this ghost of mine is still running diagnostics to find out everything he possibly can about the virus so that he can come up with a way to destroy it." Sarah nodded even though he wouldn't be able to see her. "But he thinks it might be possibly attacking Chuck's emotions...making him more reactionary, more prone to frustration, anger. It could even be rewriting things in his head. You have to be careful with him, Sarah. Be careful around him. He could be...volatile."

Sarah stared straight ahead, her vision swimming for a moment. She got hold of herself and sat up straight again. That checked out. Snapping at children for trivial things, being more prone to lashing out about things that had never made him blink before, things he might've even laughed about before. "Jesus, it's…" It hit her like a punch to her gut. "It's erasing him. Isn't it?"

"And replacing him with something very...very different. That's what this guy thinks."

She had to ask, even though the potential answer made her feel like screaming forever. "Is it permanent?" she asked in as dull of a voice as she could manage.

"I don't—We don't think so. As long as we can fix it in time, we think it can be reversed," Bryce replied. That made things feel less bleak, at least, but her ribs felt like they might crush the organs residing inside her torso. "Take I-55 out of Chicago."

"Okay. Where am I going?"

"Meet me in Santa Fe. I'll text you the address." She was silent, wondering what he was playing at, and wondering how she'd manage to swerve away from whatever Chuck had planned, if whatever he'd planned before was still a thing now that his brain was full of a corrupted Intersect. "What?" Bryce asked. She recognized a hint of the Agent Larkin she'd been drawn to a few years back, before she'd known there was better out there, that real happiness was achievable, before she'd discovered she had some worth outside of the CIA, before she'd ever known that Chuck Bartowski existed.

She ignored that tone in his voice. "Chuck. He came up with the travel route. He's the planner. I-I don't know if that's...gone now. Or if it's still there. But I need to find a way to wrestle the plan from him now."

"You'll figure it out. Tell him it's a CIA safehouse. That's...actually what it is." She smirked. "When you take I-55, that turns into I-44 somewhere around St. Louis."

"You let me worry about getting to Santa Fe, and you worry about making sure this...ghost of yours can take the virus out of Chuck's Intersect," Sarah said. She hadn't meant to snap really, but she was on edge. She didn't feel like taking the high road and apologizing for snapping, either. "Are you sure your guy can fix this?"

There was a pause. "If anyone can, he can, but Sarah...if he can't…"

She cut him off. "We'll deal with that if… if it happens." She cursed inwardly and spoke without thinking. "This is my fault. I was so sure Shaw was dirty. And Chuck found a way to check, probably to-to humor me. To help. And now this."

"Yeah, well… that's just Chuck being Chuck, isn't it? Nothing any of us can do to stop him from jumping to help people," Bryce said quietly. "It's why he's...our guy." There was definitely fondness in his voice, maybe even outright affection. And Sarah couldn't help pulling in her claws just a little. "Don't take this on your shoulders, Sarah."

"Yeah, well, easy for you to say. You're over there, wherever you are, talking to this ghost or whatever, and I'm the one who's here, with Chuck, watching this shit happen to him." Maybe she hadn't pulled in her claws after all. "It is on my shoulders, Bryce. It's going to take days to get to Sante Fe, and how far gone will he be by then?"

"I...meant...don't blame yourself."

She shut her eyes in frustration. "Oh," she huffed. "Yeah, well… trust me, I know where the blame ultimately falls, Agent Larkin." And she hoped he got every last bit of her meaning. The silence told her he had.

"Uh, by the way, this Intersect programmer made a pretty good case for why you were right not to trust Agent Shaw," Bryce said finally. Of course he just moved right along, not taking responsibility for Chuck's current predicament when he was the one who put it in his friend's head in the first place. But then she absorbed what he'd just said.

She sat up ramrod straight. "Did Agent Shaw do this to Chuck?"

"Think about it, Sarah. Someone put that virus into specifically Agent Daniel Shaw's file. It didn't just materialize there out of nothing. It was systematically installed in his file, prepped to shoot off into the Intersect the second it came into contact with it; in this case, Chuck seeing it in the file. It was put there for the person who has the Intersect in his head. Who knows the makeup of this team? Who knows about the Intersect?" He paused dramatically. "Us, Casey, Beckman, Chuck…"

"And Shaw," Sarah breathed. "Holy shit." She put it together in her head and felt blinding rage course through her. "Bryce, this is some kind of loyalty test. A booby trap to catch Chuck snooping on him. If Chuck opened his CIA file to do a deep dive into his background because he doesn't trust him, the virus would corrupt his Intersect and he'd kill two birds with one stone." Her throat closed a little at the way she'd accidentally phrased that. She rushed on, trying to push it out of her mind. "He'd know Chuck doesn't trust him, and by extension me since Chuck wouldn't necessarily do that without me backing him up, but he'd also have Chuck out of his way with an Intersect so corrupted he can barely function." She narrowed her eyes, thinking back to their first encounter in DC. "Oh my God, he did something similar with me...my CIA file."

"What?" Bryce asked, and she heard anger in his voice, too. Agent Shaw was toast from so many different angles. But first and foremost, they needed to rescue Chuck from this fucked up virus.

"I told him my real name," Sarah began. "Well, not my real name, I made one up, but that's not important. The important thing is in my CIA file."

"The ghost can take a look," Bryce offered. She felt herself break out in a cold sweat. Nobody was supposed to see what was in that file. Ever. There were things hidden deep inside of that file that could've potentially had her arrested by another country's intelligence agents for human rights violations. Not many, but...enough. And she had no idea who this ghost was. Sure, they were trying to rescue Chuck. It wasn't important that she didn't know their motive, they were trying to help Chuck. But what could they do with what was in her file?

"Sarah...Chuck's in a lot of danger. I don't know much about you but I know you at least...care about him. It's—"

"I know," she snapped. She took a deep breath, trying to get rid of the awful tingling in her fingers and toes. "It's just that there's...a lot in there."

"I know," Bryce replied. "I'm sure there is. We all have...things we...don't want people to know…" His voice drifted off. He had no fucking clue. But soon, that ghost—whoever it was—would have more than just a clue.

But Chuck…

And that was where her world started and ended now.

"Do it," she said with every fiber of her being. She had to get off of the phone now, before she exploded and Bryce heard it. "I need to get back. Before he wakes up."

"Understood," Bryce replied. "See you in Santa Fe."

"We'll be there," she said, and disconnected the call.

She blew out a breath and fought back frustrated tears. She blinked a few times and they were gone. Her heart ached. It sounded like the further this virus progressed, the more Chuck would lose himself. It wasn't even about her, about what she would lose. It was about all of the lives he touched, his sister's, his friends', so many people out there whose futures relied on Chuck Bartowski, on Agent Carmichael, without even knowing he existed.

And it was about the utter inhumanity of all of this. The way Chuck was constantly treated by the U.S. government's intelligence agencies wasn't the way human beings should be treated. Chuck was a superior human being. He was the best of humanity. But even if he wasn't, nobody should go through this. Agent Shaw had knowingly committed an act of the worst and cruelest kind; he was purposely erasing the soul of another human being, corrupting the brain of another human being.

It just so happened the human being he attacked was the only person in the entire universe who made her feel fully alive. And Sarah wasn't going to rest until she saved Chuck Bartowski from this inhumane attack on his personhood. For once, she wasn't doing this alone.

Agent Shaw wasn't going to rewrite her man's soul. She wasn't letting that fucker kill his big, lovable, goofball brain, his absolutely genius brain. His was the only brain that had suffered the Intersect and had come away intact. Like shit was Agent Shaw going to be what destroyed it.

It had taken too long for her to get here, too long for her to find some semblance of worth in herself, and Chuck had been the catalyst. He was why she looked in the mirror without blistering hatred for what she'd had to do for the CIA in this last decade since Graham cornered her and blackmailed her into the Farm. Chuck Bartowski hadn't given up on her, not for a second, not even these last few weeks when she'd made it all too clear he should give up on her.

She wouldn't quit on him. She would never quit on him.

And that meant she'd first have to find a way to get him to Santa Fe without incident. It would mean having to bear the brunt of this change in his emotions, in his mannerisms. It meant figuring out how to deal with his unusual reactions, his anger, and whatever else this corrupt Intersect would throw at her.

She could do this. She would do this.

}o{

He didn't know why he'd reached his hand out for the other side of the bed, still groggy with sleep and a headache. He'd fallen asleep alone on the bed, so of course he was going to wake up alone.

But as he pushed himself up onto his elbow and blinked his eyes open, a dull ache still behind those eyes, he glanced over his shoulder to find the chair she'd been sitting in when he flopped onto the bed and fell asleep earlier was empty.

Frowning, he sat up all the way and looked around the room. Where the hell did she go? They were in Chicago, not LA. In a hotel room. They were in a completely different part of the country and on a road trip together. Where else did she even have to be but here?

He felt a thread of suspicion slither between his ribcage, curling its way through his chest like a snake as he slowly climbed up to his feet. He rolled his head on his shoulders, trying to ease the dull ache in his head. And then he made his way to the bathroom, glancing in to find it empty. He peeked down into the street below their hotel room and didn't see a familiar head of blond out there.

Then again, she was a spy, the best spy in the world. If she didn't want to be seen, she'd make sure she wasn't. And he had a feeling he was the one person she didn't want seeing her if she left the hotel. He wasn't sure why, but he had a niggling distrust. He loved her more than anything in the world, but she'd pulled the wool over his eyes before. It followed that she'd try to do it again, especially now that they were really together, when he'd let his guard down.

These people seemed to get off on pulling the wool over his eyes, taking advantage of his trusting nature. And a tiger didn't change its stripes. He didn't put it past her to still see him as a mark in some ways, in some situations. Like now, when it was just the two of them, off on their own. Without any buffers.

Walking away from the window, he checked to make sure his room key was still in his wallet, snagged his cell phone and…

Wait.

He froze in the middle of the room as his eyes latched onto something on the nightstand on her side of the bed. And then he oh so slowly made his way towards it, that slithering suspicion sending heat through his chest, up his neck, and into his head, making it hurt worse.

Cell phone.

She'd left her cell phone sitting right there. Something she never left for any reason.

Giving her the benefit of the doubt didn't occur to him as he snagged the phone and opened it. No missed calls. No texts. He searched it to see what calls she'd made, if she'd texted anyone while he was sleeping. He went back a few days. There were texts between her and Ellie, innocuous enough, but he went back further just to make sure his sister wasn't somehow plotting against him too. She wasn't. One text from Casey informed her that his gunshot wound was still there, and that he was still confined to his chair. The rest of the texts were from Chuck himself.

Same with the phone calls she'd made. She'd only called him in the last few days.

He put the phone back down and made for the door to the room. She'd been gone too long to just be getting ice and the bucket was still on the dresser, the bag still folded next to it.

Leaving the room behind, Chuck made his way to the vending room on their floor anyway, just in case. He didn't find her there so he headed straight for the elevators.

In minutes, he was in the lobby, sweeping his gaze through the expansive room, across the people congregating there. He eyed the concierge. He made his way to the bar. She wasn't there. The gift shop? No. Coffee shop? Not there either. She wasn't in any of the restaurants. Nor was she out by the pool.

By the time Chuck found his way back to their hotel room, his muscles were taut, his jaw clenched, nostrils flared. And a deep, seething anger was coursing through him. He turned and slammed his fist against the inside of the door. It made a loud thumping sound and pain seared through his hand, but he just flexed his bruising knuckles, winced, and turned back, making his way back to the bed.

It wasn't that he thought she wasn't coming back. She was his partner. They were in love. It was that she was off somewhere for some reason, a reason he couldn't even begin to guess at. But she chose now to do it, when she thought he was sleeping. Which meant she was hiding something from him. And it was important. Because Agent Sarah Walker didn't do trivial.

Who was she meeting? Who was she talking to?

Someone Chuck didn't want her talking to. Otherwise, she would've told him, and she would've taken her phone with her.

So he'd wait. However long it took, he'd stay right here...and he'd wait. He'd waited for her for a whole year, after all. What were a few minutes?

}o{

Glancing at her watch, she cursed, knowing she'd taken longer than she'd meant to. The conversation hadn't made her feel any better, and it had been more extensive than she'd expected. And she'd gotten news that was worse than she'd expected, too.

She had to hide how upset she was once she got up to their room. And she took a moment to duck into the gift shop to buy Chuck a Northwestern baseball cap with the cash she always kept stashed in her pocket for emergencies.

It was an alibi, just in case.

That side trip to buy the hat hadn't done much to help the roiling sensation in her chest. The uneasiness, the overwhelming worry. The desperation.

But she went back to the room anyway, taking a deep breath before she unlocked and opened the door into the room.

The blinds were still shut against the waning light of the afternoon sun setting behind the cityscape, the way she'd left them before she'd walked out of the room. But the victim of Agent Shaw's plot wasn't where she'd left him.

The bed was empty, the sheets mussed, the dent there in his pillow. She could see it in the beam of light that snuck through the edge of the blinds. Before she could survey the rest of the room, a voice made her quite nearly jump right out of her skin.

"Been gone a while, Sarah."

She pressed her hand to her chest and swung around to look over towards the corner where his voice had come from. He sat in the chair there, very still, a swath of shadow covering his top half so that she could only dimly see his eyes. He clutched onto either arm of the chair, his feet planted firmly on the floor, sneakers on his feet. When had he put those on?

"Oh. Have I?"

"Mm. I woke up a long time ago. You weren't here." He paused and she saw his head tilt a little. "Where'd you go for so long?"

The tone of his voice sent a shiver down her spine. It was him and then it...wasn't. There was a casual calmness to it, a quietude. Almost like a snake softly hissing right before it sprang, its jaw unhinging, swallowing its furry dinner whole.

"Oh. Hello to you too." She grinned at him, giving him a teasing look through her eyelashes. "Got ya somethin' to remember this stop on our little road trip. Since you were so interested in the college campus." She slid the hat out of the bag and playfully threw it across the room at him like a frisbee, a mischievous look in her blue eyes to cover the chill going through her.

He had to lean forward to snatch it out of the air, and he did so with an ease that made her widen her eyes a bit. It brought his face more into the light. She could see something twitch in his jaw as he watched her closely, and he turned the hat around slowly in his hand, his brown eyes finally sliding down to the gift.

The corner of his lips turned up. "Ha. Thank you. Very thoughtful of you. Where did you get it?"

She wondered if it was a trick question, and she wasn't sure why. The way he raised his eyebrows, almost as if in forced nonchalance. "The gift shop," she said honestly. "That's-That's why I was gone for a bit."

"Spent all that time in the gift shop, did you?" The eyes flicked back up to meet hers and he stayed right where he was, still leaned forward in his chair, looking up at her through his eyelashes. There was that twitch in his jaw again.

"Well, it's a big gift shop but n-no, not the whole time. Just exploring the hotel, really. You had your headache and were sleeping it off after all." He just stared and his eyes moved to the side for just a moment before coming back to her. She tried to follow his gaze as subtly as possible and she cursed herself inwardly. Her cell phone. It was sitting there on her side of the bed. He'd seen it.

She'd better make sure he didn't know about the burner in her pocket.

"So what'd you find during your exploration?" He swept a hand slowly through the air in front of him.

He was so cold and calculating, the way he questioned her with a cool nonchalance. And she thought it wasn't a stretch to assume being overly suspicious and distrusting went with the change in his personality from the corrupted Intersect thanks to that virus trap Shaw set for him in his file. Suspicion and distrust were the antithesis of Chuck Bartowski.

"Meet anyone interesting? Speak to anyone interesting?" His eyebrows bobbed in a chilling pantomime of something Chuck did often enough, something that typically made her giggle, made her chest fill with joy at how much of a goof he was. "Have any interesting conversations you want to tell me about? After all, I was sort of missing out, you know, left up here with my headache, while you were down there...exploring."

And she knew then that it wasn't just suspicion. It felt like was questioning her in a way that might be laying a trap, trying to catch her in a lie. He knew. The way she'd left her phone. How long she was gone. She was hiding something from him.

Sarah Walker made a calculated choice, knowing it was a risk. And she lied to him anyway.

"No one except the nice woman I bought that cute hat from," she said easily, bouncing one shoulder in a cute shrug. She met his brown eyes with her blue ones and gave him a closed mouth smile. "And she, uh, didn't have much to say. Seemed like she'd had a pretty long day." She walked further into the room and snagged the hat from his hands, then put it on over his curls, backwards and a little crooked. "Cute," she chirped, leaning down to kiss his temple.

He seemed to warm at that, a little light coming back into his cool gaze. "What else did you find?" he asked, his voice sounding more like him.

"This place has a gym. But there were too many people in there. Thought it'd probably be gross and humid in there if I went inside, so I just peeked in a bit." She wasn't actually sure if there was a gym, but...again...it was a risk she was taking.

Chuck eyed her for a long, uncomfortable moment, and then he smiled and nodded, climbing to his feet. His chest was close to hers as he rose to his full height and he leaned in to peck her on the lips. "Sounds cool." Taking the hat off of his head, he turned it in the air and tugged it down over her hair, grinning.

She grinned back. "Look okay?"

"Cute as hell, Agent Walker." He pursed his lips, thinking, and then he nodded again. "I feel like having a shower. Think I'll do that. What do you say to staying in, away from the crowds, away from other people, just...the two of us…? Maybe get some room service? Something nice and romantic."

"Oh, I'm about it," she said smoothly, and she tugged on the hem of his shirt affectionately.

"Good."

She watched him then as he swept into the bathroom, the door clicking shut behind him. She waited for the sound of the shower running before she moved over to the bed and sat on the end of it numbly. "What the fuck?" she muttered, her heart racing, electric nerves crashing through her limbs. She had to pull herself together because this felt a lot more dangerous than she could've ever imagined it would be.

This was Chuck. This was her Chuck.

So why was she so fucking afraid of him?

She got a hold of herself and snagged her burner from her back pocket, rushing over to her suitcase, whipping it open and hiding the burner phone extra well, in a secret compartment she hadn't bothered using when she left with Chuck. She was using it now.

What were the odds of Chuck knowing she'd called Bryce when she left him behind in the hotel room? The odds of this angrier, suspicious Chuck being happy about that revelation were...not great.

}o{

"Does this count as a date?"

Sarah paused over her pasta, chewing and swallowing slowly as she lifted her gaze to Chuck's. He'd been quiet more than anything since they ordered dinner and received their food, both of them distracted by their own hunger.

But now he spoke, the corner of his mouth tilting up, a bit of a shy, crooked smile on his face.

She smiled back at him and raised an eyebrow. "I think...it might." She dabbed her lips with her napkin. "We're at a table. It has a tablecloth over it."

"And a white tablecloth at that."

Sarah giggled, feeling the warmth between them again, something that had been spotty in the last day or so. She'd had to tiptoe, watch him closely, think hard about how to respond to him, how to react to his behavior. "We might not be at a fancy restaurant, but I still think this counts. The food is fancy."

"This is fancy food." He chuckled, looking down at his shrimp and angel hair pasta. "And expensive. How would Beckman take it if we charged this to the American taxpayer account?"

"Uhhh...I wouldn't try her." She wrinkled her nose and shook her head minutely.

"Why not? You think after how many times I almost died for the ungrateful fuckers, I'd get to have an expensive dinner or two on their dime. They get to sit at their nice normal dinner tables without having to hide their relationships from their bosses or potentially traitorous coworkers. They don't have to go to work and wonder if a terrorist might kill 'em before they hit their thirtieth birthday." He shoveled a shrimp around on his plate moodily. "I feel like I'm owed a hundred buck fancy pasta dinner."

Sarah felt the warmth fizzle out and she swallowed hard. "That isn't how it works, though."

"What if I don't care how it works? I have the Intersect. I've got secrets in here that even the shorty ginger doesn't know about." Dear God, Sarah couldn't help but wince. Sure, General Beckman wasn't here and hadn't heard that, but she still feared the woman might've heard it...somehow...with her crazy brilliant radar ears or something. "I'm powerful, Sarah. More powerful than anyone's ever given me credit for. Nobody's ever properly respected this power. And someday, I'm going to find a way to make them respect it. Respect me. For now, I'll settle for making the NSA pay for this food." His grin was wide, but his nose didn't wrinkle. It was all straight, white teeth and thin lips.

She shivered and glanced at the window. "It's getting really cold out there, huh?" she asked, trying to play off the shiver as being outwardly, rather than just cold in her soul.

"Chicago wind is the coldest there is," he said, shrugging. "That's what they say anyway. Why don't you take a shower? We're hitting the road again in the morning, aren't we?"

Sarah nodded slowly. "I'll, um, shower in the morning. Wakes me up." He seemed satisfied enough with her reasoning, which was a relief, because the truth was that she didn't want to leave him alone, even for just the ten minutes it would take for her to shower. She didn't think she was in physical danger. She believed with every fiber in her being that Chuck Bartowski would never do anything to harm her, no matter what the virus in the Intersect tried to make him do, no matter how angry it made him, no matter how much he lost who he was. But if he wandered out of their hotel room, she didn't know what kind of trouble it might cause. Would he verbally assault, or maybe even physically assault, some staff member? Some other guest at the hotel? Would he just up and leave? She had no idea what the corrupted Intersect was capable of.

Sarah took her time finishing her food, and she took her time changing, ducking into the bathroom to do so. He was in bed by the time she finished, already lying down with his head on the pillow, staring up at the ceiling unblinkingly. He had a bit of a wide-eyed look on his face. Almost like he was waiting for something, like someone had aimed a remote at him and had pressed pause.

It was eerie.

She slowly padded over to the other side of the bed and sat down with her back to him. Only then did it strike her. They'd just called their romantic room service dinner a "date", they were a new couple, on a road trip driving across the country, alone, and they'd been sleeping together in the same bed for a few days now. More than that, they'd been having sex regularly. And as amazing as it had been, that heady sense of finally that had yet to wear off, she felt nerves prickling at the back of her neck at the thought of it now.

Chuck must have expectations about what was going to happen after their "romantic date", and she wouldn't blame him at all if he did. In literally any other circumstance, she'd be there right along with him. In fact, she would've already rounded second base with him by now.

But Agent Shaw had most likely booby trapped his own CIA file with a virus that would latch onto, invade, and corrupt the Intersect that was in Chuck's head the moment he accessed said file. And that virus was making her Chuck into a man she didn't recognize, his behavior so far out of left field...the quiet, unsettling anger, the way his first response was to take, how nonchalantly he considered illegal and even violent options instead of his usual instinct to protect people, even people he would never meet.

What if he tried to come onto her? She wasn't having sex with him. She refused. Not like this. Not when he was so compromised, so vulnerable. Not when his mind wasn't his own. What would it do to him physically, what with the agonizing headaches he'd gotten since he looked at Shaw's file? And frankly, she was afraid of what Corrupted Intersect Chuck's level of control was like. The concept of having to find out while they were making love filled her with absolute dread.

So, no. God, how would she worm out of it?

They were silent, an air of discomfort, tension in the room. She wondered if he could feel it, or if he was oblivious to it the way he'd been oblivious to her concern and confusion earlier today.

"After all that pasta, I'll be sleeping like a log." His voice made her jump a little. And she jumped again when she heard him shift and felt his large, warm hand on the small of her back, over the thin cotton of the camisole she wore. "Geez, jumpy tonight?"

At least he'd noticed that, she supposed. She just smirked at him over her shoulder. "Just lost in my head."

"Really?" His voice was quiet again, tentative. And she wondered what he sensed from her. "What's got you so lost?

"I, um, I was just wondering...if that game I played earlier, with the darts, if I'd aimed my throw a little higher, if it might've swooped down at an angle more in the end, and I could've hit that last balloon. Maybe I would've gotten the giant teddy bear instead of the dumb bouncy ball." If anything, she was excellent at lying.

But he was still quiet, and she wondered if he saw right through it. "That guy was a piece of shit. I bet the entire game was stacked against the player. They always do that crap at those trashy places. Cheating to make sure they don't lose too many prizes." She felt his fingers curl against her back, before his hand slipped to her hip and held on tightly, not so tightly it would bruise, but tight enough that she went tense. "I didn't like the way he talked to you, either. Like you were a piece of meat."

"Ha," she scoffed, turning to look at him. The look in his face was dark, his eyes swirling with a dangerous purplish gold. She just barely resisted the urge to shiver. "You don't think I'm used to that? It's harmless."

"It isn't. If he'd even tried anything more than that, I would've broken his fingers one by one." His hand tightened a little more on her hip and she forced herself not to move a muscle. "Scum like that shouldn't exist." He was quiet for a while, and then his hand left her hip and she heard the covers rustle, the mattress shifting. She told herself not to look, ignoring her curiosity.

But then she felt him close, his chest pressed into her shoulders, and his arm rounded her body, hugging her back against him. Damn her, but it felt so good still. Even with the chill going through her, this was Chuck—her Chuck—and she felt an unending comfort and safety and that invigorating certainty that she was needed and wanted by the best man in the universe.

His lips pressed against her hair near her ear, and his breath fanned a tendril against her temple, making her shiver.

"Sarah, I would protect you from anything, everything. I will protect you. Always. You know that, right? That I'd do anything—literally anything—to keep you safe? You know that?" His arm tightened around her and she let herself melt back against him.

"Of course I know that, Chuck. I'd do the same for you," she said in an even voice, turning to nuzzle his face a bit with hers.

"I know. You have." She heard him swallow hard. "Fuck that guy with the darts. He's just lucky I was feeling charitable. Anybody ever does that to you again, I won't feel so charitable maybe." She shivered, her whole body wracked with it. "Cold?" he asked in that low tone of his, like the snake again, right before it bites.

"Uh, yeah. Guess being in LA for a year has made me sort of a wimp with this midwest weather." She tried to giggle but it sounded so forced. He didn't notice as he crawled back away from her and lifted the sheets.

"Here, get in. It's warm under here."

Oh no.

She didn't want to have to hurt Chuck. And she wouldn't hurt him bad, she hoped, but she was going to have to reject him and she really, really didn't want to. How would he react to rejection? Sure, she could take him physically, but she didn't want this.

She wanted him. She wanted him back.

But she crawled in under the covers anyway, sending him a grateful smile, and she stiffly lowered herself to lie down, her head on her pillow. She held her breath as he crawled down as well, lying beside her.

This was it, the moment of truth. Should she just speak up before it even started, tell him she was tired, not in the mood...on her period? Shit, this was the worst thing ever. She hated all of this, and this part of it wasn't even the worst part of it.

She fretted as the awkward silence extended.

And then his hand found hers under the covers, and his fingers curled around hers, holding tight. This was a good tight, the kind that made her feel like she was touching ground and soaring high above it both at the same time.

Sarah Walker tensed as he moved to turn off the lamp beside him, the only light they'd had on in the room, and the room was immersed in darkness. She nearly spoke up, not quite having nailed down an excuse, when he rolled over towards her and draped an arm over her midsection, pulling her in tight as he lowered himself half on top of her.

But instead of kissing her, instead of slipping his fingers under her underwear or under the hem of her shirt to tease her—a bit of his mischievous and exceptional foreplay she'd come to know the last few days—Chuck Bartowski wedged his face under her chin and just hugged her close, nuzzling her neck with his nose.

The way he squirmed happily against her, his lips stretching into a wide smile that she could feel on her neck, was all sorts of Chuck again. She could feel him, his sweetness, his constant want to touch her, the way she could feel him getting comfort from her embrace.

Sarah wrapped him up in her arms and held him close, kissing his hair, reveling in how soft his curls were against her skin.

"I don't want to go, Sarah." She froze, her heart seizing. Did he know? Was he feeling this? The way this virus was infecting his brain? She bit her lip hard and shut her eyes tight. She didn't want him to go, either. God, she wasn't letting that happen. She wasn't losing him. "I want to stay here, just the two of us. When we get back to LA, it's going to be hard. It's going to be so hard, trying to hide this from everyone. I don't want to go back, I want to just stay with you in this place where nobody knows or cares who we are."

Oh. God, she'd thought…

She turned against him, their chests pressed flush together, and she pressed her lips to his cheek. "We're going to be together, Chuck. We just have to be...smart. But I...get the sentiment. And I agree. Not having to hide this sounds so good, just...not so doable. Not right now."

He nodded, cuddling her in a way that let her know that this wasn't real life Invasion of the Body Snatchers...at least not at this moment. This was Chuck Bartowski cuddling her, in every way. She felt his warmth and adoration. He wasn't taking anything but comfort from her, and he wouldn't. That wasn't what Chuck did. And this was Chuck. That virus was slowly pulling him out of himself, suppressing everything she loved about him, but he was still here in her arms. This was him.

And she wasn't letting go of him. She would sleep with one eye open just in case, but she wasn't letting go of him.


A/N: We know a lot of people like to stick us both in certain boxes with our fic and the tone of our fic and whatnot, but we want everyone to know that this was a plot we talked about for a long time, multiple conversations, and we equally played a part in coming up with it. Please review!

-SC and DC