The flashback in this chapter takes place before the flashback in chapter 5. Thanks for reading!

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Chuck kept sneaking glances at her as they walked toward the restaurant. She'd hardly said a word in the Nerd Herder save for a couple of half-hearted responses to any of his questions. He'd given her her space long enough but if they were going to have dinner with Awesome and Ellie the whole monosyllabic thing would have to let up.

"Hey, wait, before we go in," Chuck said, pulling her aside right as they were reaching the doors, "is everything ok?" Her whole body language said everything was not ok; asking was just a formality. She crossed her arms and clenched her jaw, not angry, but still unresponsive. "Is this about the mission?" he went on. "Cuz you can't catch them all, you know. Casey's a blowhard, he'll get over it. It's not your fault that that Sarnov guy got away."

"Yes it is. I shouldn't have even been there."

"Wow you spies are really hard on yourselves. Sarah, it's ok. He may be gone but the important thing is we're safe– I'm safe, right? You did your job. So tonight, instead of beating yourself about something that's already in the past lets have ourselves some moo goo gai pan while we enjoy a night of doctorly anecdotes from the Awesomes. A good time is promised to be had by all."

And although his warm, goofy grin had always been enough to turn her mood around, tonight it wasn't. Now, instead of the pensive look that had clouded her eyes all day, her face just said, that isn't it, at all. She sighed. "I'm pregnant."

A lady passing them to enter the restaurant herself promptly shrieked as Chuck promptly fainted.

.

.

"Chuck!"

Sarah kneeled over him and tried shaking him back to consciousness. She knew she shouldn't have told him right then. Then again, he probably would've fainted no matter when or where he heard the news. "Chuck!" she repeated, this time slapping him.

That did the trick. Chuck's eyes shot open in a vaguely horrified expression. "Come on," Sarah said as she pulled on his arm, helping him to stand. "Get up."

"But I need to sit down," he said, already bending his knees again, regarding the sidewalk as if it was the only part of the street that wasn't spinning.

"No, no, Chuck," Sarah said, getting into his eyes. "Dinner, remember?"

He stared back at her. "You're pregnant?"

This really was a bad time to break the news.

Just then Ellie, followed by Awesome, popped out of the restaurant's entrance, fully alert, albeit a little surprised to find Chuck and Sarah outside. "Hey guys!" she said. "A lady just went in asking for a doctor."

Awesome looked around, finally coming to pat Chuck on the back. "Said some guy had fainted out here. See anyone, Chuck?"

"Huh? No," Chuck replied. "Certainly wasn't me!"

"Great! Let's eat!"

.

.

The restaurant was alive with noise coming from every packed table in the house. Awesome was in the middle of a story involving a patient who had come in with some foreign object stuck in... Sarah wasn't sure where; she was too busy focusing on the glass of water she was sipping. Her moo goo gai pan remained largely unscathed and inspiring a distinct feeling of nausea in the pit of her stomach. And sitting opposite her, too-vigorously cutting his slab of meat, was Chuck, laughing loudly at all the wrong moments in Awesome's story. A peak under the table alerted her of the way his knee was nervously bouncing up and down. She stared at him above the glass. He was sweating.

"It reminded me of Morgan and Anna," Awesome laughed. "He still in the doghouse?"

"Morgan?" Chuck asked.

Of all the things he could've been feeling at the moment (fear, shock, joy?) Chuck was acting like he was harboring a huge secret. Sarah could see that if she didn't talk to him– quick-- his already cracked dam of self control would burst wide open. She tried to catch his glance but he mostly kept his eyes on his feverishly-moving knife and fork.

"Morgan is great!" Chuck exclaimed. "He and Anna worked everything out, though she'll probably kick him out again next week-- you know those two crazy kids. You wanna know what the funny thing is though? The funny thing is that Sarah's pregnant! Would someone please pass the pepper?"

Sarah slowly put her glass down as Awesome and Ellie slowly turned to look at her.

"Surprise," she whispered under her breath.

"You're having a baby?" Ellie asked, the shock even in her voice. Chuck looked like he was very eager to hear the answer to that question too. Sarah locked gazes with him, just for a moment, before turning back to Ellie and nodding.

"Wow," Awesome said. "That's.... awesome, bro."

"Awesome?" Ellie asked. "Awesome? Chuck, you make 11 dollars an hour! And Sarah, you work at a yogurt shop! Have either of you even given any thought as to how you're going to raise a child?"

"I haven't really had the time to-" Chuck tired but Ellie's voice was quickly climbing in octaves, as it did whenever she found herself in moments of high distress.

"My little brother is having a baby! My baby brother who killed two consecutive goldfish by 'accidentally' forgetting to feed them is having a baby and all you can say is Awesome?!"

A silence fell over the table as Ellie grabbed her wine glass and downed it all in one gulp in an attempted to calm herself down. Sarah wished she could do the same. Ellie put the glass down. "My little brother is having a baby!" Before Sarah could even realize it Ellie had come over and enveloped her in a hug, her breath catching on tiny tears as she let it all out. "I'm going to be an aunt!"

Sarah stood stiffly, too surprised and confused to even return the hug at first. She looked over Ellie's shoulder. "Chuck, can I talk to you for a minute?"

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It is the crack of dawn, the world is still asleep, but Chuck is screwing in a light bulb.

The light fixture over the livingroom has two light bulbs and one of them was out so Chuck found a light bulb in a closet and decided to replace it. The job makes him feel happy, and also quite manly. Sarah would need a ladder to change it, but standing on a chair from the kitchen he's able to reach the light with ease and so he feels manly being able to do this for her, take care of her in some small way.

He steps off the chair and looks around the now brighter room, not to find something else that may need fixing, just to look. It's something he's come accustomed to doing while Sarah's still in the bedroom, asleep and oblivious. He'll walk over to her desk and skim through the envelopes of unopened mail. He checks her TiVo to see what shows she's programmed in and what she saw last. Walking over to the bookshelf he drags his fingertips along the spines every book on the book shelf, though there aren't many. Her fridge is a paradox. There isn't much but organic lemonade, bags of ready-made salad, and in the fridge there's fudge popsicles and, oddly, a bag of cheesey puffs. He doesn't waste time questioning it, just loves it all.

He likes to imagine what it's like for Sarah to live here, in a place that she's come as close to settling down in as she's ever gotten. He likes to imagine what it would be like for him to live here too, the sorts of arguments they'd have over which posters can go on the walls and just how many gaming systems he could hook up to the TV. What it would be like to spend a whole Saturday lounging around in every room in the house, not bothering to change out of their PJs.

He sits on the big, comfy brown leather couch, her one grand indulgence in the whole place. He picks up the book on the coffee table and opens it to the bookmark, which is actually just an old fortune cookie fortune. It reads, Traveling more often is important for your health and happiness.

He turns it over.

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"What were you thinking?!" They were back outside and that shocked/horrified/scared look still hadn't left Chuck's face. "You just found out not a half hour ago and you're already telling the whole world! We haven't even talked about this!"

"I wouldn't exactly call Awesome and Ellie the whole world..."

"I can't even tell if Ellie hates me... this was not the way to tell them."

"She doesn't hate you. This is just how Ellie gets when.... her little brother announces he's having a kid. Having a kid," he repeated, more to himself. "I'm going to be a father." He kept saying it over and over again, putting the emphasis on a different word every time until the whole sentence came out of his mouth virtually italicized. "I gotta...."

She stood dumbly as Chuck walked back into the restaurant without another word.

She waited, wondering what he was doing. In his condition it was probably a very bad idea to let him idle, but Sarah couldn't make a move to follow him. She didn't know what to do. About any of this.

A few minutes later Chuck came back outside, looking a little less shocked. "This may have been an accident... but it's not a mistake," he said, his shining eyes betraying his now composed demeanor. "I'm going to be a father and the more I think about it the more I realize that I've never been happier in my whole life."

He said it so simply, like it was just a fact and not some big revelation, that she smiled for the first time that day.

"And I wanted to give you this."

Sarah took the slip of paper he held out. It was a fortune cookie fortune. "Traveling more often is important for your health and happiness," she read, looking at curiously. "I don't get it."

"Turn it over."

Marry me

At the sight of the words her eyes instantly brimmed with tears. "What is this?" she asked, her voice nothing more than a whisper.

"Say yes," Chuck pleaded. "And don't think I'm only doing this because you're pregnant. Because it only made me realize that I should've done this a long time ago." He stepped closer, taking her hand. "Say yes and we can have the life we've been talking about. You talked about quitting your job and we talked about being together and now we actually have a good excuse to do it. Not that I'm calling the kid an excuse," he said, matching the teary laugh that left Sarah's lips.

"I can take care of you."

She wrapped her arms around his neck and dug her face into his chest. "I may only make 11 bucks an hour but I can take care of you," he repeated, squeezing her back and letting his tears fall. "I'll be there every step of the way, Sarah, you can count on me. I'll never leave your side, I promise, I'll be th— "

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He stands at the door frame of her room. He can never spend too much time watching her sleep but he'll have to leave before she wakes up. They tried it once the other way, with "goodbyes", but that was too hard and something they both agreed never to do again.

He crosses over to the bed and drops a note beside her.

When she wakes up she'll read it and it'll say, Next time I'll stay.