Thanks again to those who read and reviewed. Sometimes reviews can spark ideas in my head, plus, it's always interesting to see who's reading my story, so thanks so much! Here's the next part. Hopefully it's not too trippy.

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Sometimes Chuck won't realize he's in a dream for a long while, but this time he knows right away, or at least, he suspects something's amiss, because he's wearing a tuxedo. And Chuck doesn't just wear tuxedos.

Unless he's on a mission.

"Am I on a mission?"

Sarah snorts. "Uh, no? We're in your room."

And so they are. Sarah's sitting on the edge of Chuck's bed clutching a joystick. Her hand moves feverishly over it and she puts her whole body into it, her face set in intense concentration on the video game playing on Chuck's TV.

On the screen, the irritatingly slow, pixilated ball of Pong lingers, taking forever to move anywhere.

"Why are you playing that game?"

Sarah looks at him, black-rimmed lenses frame her confused eyes. "Isn't it obvious?"

"No," Chuck says slowly, shaking his head. Nothing is very obvious at the moment. Certainly not why Sarah's wearing a tee with "Spock is my Homeboy" stenciled on the front. But he chooses to just go with it.

"Uh, Sarah? I wanted to apologize to you. Our relationship—or whatever you wanna call it—seems to be getting progressively worse. Can we just go back to how it used to be? You the badass agent with no attachments, me the bumbling idiot squandering all his potential?"

"Things cannot go backwards, grasshopper," Sarah responds. "Only forwards."

"Huh?"

"Ok, remember in Y: The Last Man how Yorick really wants to find Beth but she's the farthest away possible from him and he has to go through all these major obstacles in order to find her so they can finally be together?"

"Yeah… Are you Beth?"

"No, I'm Ampersand," she says.

"The monkey?"

"The monkey."

"Always throwing your sh*t at me," Chuck surmises.

Sarah's teeth delightedly yank at the licorice stick in one of her hands. "Bingo."

Chuck nods. "Yes, this is definitely a dream."

"No sh*t, Sherlock," Sarah says. "In a minute I'm going to lose the game and then I'll take my clothes off and we're going to do it on your bed."

"'Do it'?"

"Sexual intercourse."

"We are?"

"This is like your wet dream, isn't it? Me playing video games. You like girls like that. You always have. Jill liked video games."

"How do you… how do you know that?"

"You liked that about her even before you met her."

Chuck sits on his bed, thinking about this. It's true. "But maybe I like you because you don't like video games."

Sarah shimmies the joystick so hard it looks like it's about to break. On the screen the ball moves at a snail's pace. It misses her paddle completely. She loses. She huffs.

"Damn it, Chuck! You want things a certain way! You want to be a different man. So why can't I be a different woman? You wanted me to change. So now I'm changed. "

"What do you mean? I like who I am. I'm Chuck. I'm a reluctant spy. I fix computers. I'm a regular guy."

"Then why the hell are you wearing a tuxedo?"

He looks down. The tux fits him really well, if he does say so himself. Touching his hair he can feel that it is slicked back. He's even got French cufflinks. He looks amazing. He looks like a new man.

"I'm wearing a tux because…Charles Carmichael wears a tux."

Sarah nods.

"Because Bryce wears a tux."

She nods again.

"Because this is the man of your dreams."

"Score one for the nerd!"

The voice is clearly Casey's, and Chuck suddenly notices that the colonel is standing outside Chuck's window, watching them. And he's wearing a baseball uniform.

"Hey!" Chuck says, insulted. "I'm not the only nerd in this dream."

Casey grunts and walks away, out of Chuck's sight and mind, and now all Chuck sees is Sarah taking her ironic tee-shirt off. Instead of being enthralled by the look of her in semi-undress, Chuck's more taken by the fist-sized bruise in the middle of her abdomen, right below her bra.

"Ouch," he says. "That looks like it hurt."

"It did. In 2005 I broke two ribs fighting Mongolian assassins, so, as you can imagine, it stung."

"I did that, didn't I?"

"Yeah."

Chuck crawls over to her on his knees until he's close enough to touch her. And he does, placing his fingertips over stomach. As much as he savors the feel of her skin he is repulsed that he is feeling the mark he left on her. There's no hiding it, even in his dream.

"Sarah, I am so sorry. I didn't mean to."

"Don't sweat it," she says. "I'm used to getting hurt."

The conversation ends when she leans forward to kiss him deeply, fingers in his hair, down his pressed shirt, working his belt buckle.

"We're going to do it now."

"'Do it'?" Chuck asks.

"Sexual intercourse."

Chuck nods and lets himself be enamored. He closes his eyes as Sarah kisses his neck. "I got season three of Battlestar Galactica. We can watch it afterwards."

Chuck moans.

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