A/N My DVD has Pink Slip in six segments, so I'll be giving each segment its own chapter, strongly modeled on canon but changed as needed. Many changes were needed here: bathrobe Chuck, cheeseball Chuck, Nerd Herd Chuck getting knocked out with a slap. The list is extensive, and it's not just Chuck. There are lots of clues. I don't plan to keep releasing chapters at this rate, since I can't write them at this rate.
If any of you can think of any parts of the back 6, S4, or S5 that could have come from the Rough Draft, please leave a comment about it. S3 was a pretty strong season, but Rough Draft S4 was broken up, and I'll be trying to locate and reorganize those pieces when I get to the second season of this story.
I guess I'm supposed to tell you now that I don't own Chuck. Whether you believe me or not is your own business.
"Give me the case, or else."
"You're firing me?"
"Guess who holds the new record for completing the training course."
"Just someone I thought I knew, once."
Chuck hit the ground running. He passed it off as part of the Tektel dynamic, not that Devon seemed to mind the company. The blond god seemed to think it was a perfectly fine way to power through all the disappointments life could offer. He hadn't suffered many of those, but he didn't seem to think of getting born on third base was any kind of accomplishment, either.
Chuck had plenty of experience with disappointments of all kinds, but he wasn't about to even pretend to despair this time. Ellie had gone through enough of that once already, and anyway the parallels to Stanford just weren't there. It wasn't like Tektel had fired him, and he had yet to find out just how unhappy Sarah was about the whole situation. When he'd finally checked in with the LA field office, they only told him how she'd flung her phone into the pool. That was the extent of their knowledge on the subject, thankfully.
Unfortunately.
Sarah was a woman of action, not words, and while her actions poolside seemed fairly straightforward, he'd seen her do three things at once often enough. Besides, she'd been wearing a skimpy white bikini, so Chuck had good reason to doubt the accuracy of their reporting about anything else. Casey's report would be more useful, but he couldn't seem to get a hold of the big man either. He needed data, dammit!
He got data, but the wrong kind. The skills may have been untried and untested, but the quality of his data flashes hadn't changed, and Diane Beckman wasn't the sort to turn down half a loaf. While Ellie thought he was out job-hunting, he was really down in Castle, alone, doing what no one else could do and sending his results to the LA team. They were under strict orders to maintain their distance, but that was only while on overwatch. On duty, Chuck was under strict orders to stay in a secure location, where an unexpected skill flash could hurt no one.
Sometimes, for the sake of appearances, he would actually have an interview, but somehow something always seemed to go wrong, and he never got a callback. Ellie was glad that he wasn't letting this get him down.
His phone rang, not a reply to any of the many calls he'd made to Sarah. "Chuck!" said Ellie, when he'd picked up after a suitable wait. "I need you to do me a favor. Are you near a Buy More?"
He looked up, and over his shoulder, sensing the predatory box store perking up its metaphorical ears. With Jeff and Lester on the job, maybe those ears weren't so metaphorical. "I…can be. What do you need, sis?"
"Someone's eaten all the cheese balls I bought for your welcome home party." She wasn't going to turn down an opportunity to celebrate his homecoming, just because he was already there.
He'd noticed the barrel, naturally, spy training included a heightened awareness of your surroundings. Now he knew what it was for, assuming she had a lot of cheese-ball-eating friends. "You want me to pick up another one, don't you?"
"Yes, please. Thanks, you're a life-saver. Bye," said Ellie, before he could say no or try to get her to change her mind.
"But–" said Chuck to no one. He looked around. "Um…"
Chuck snuck into the Buy More, wrapped in a trench coat and hat, head down, sunglasses on. Hopefully the building wouldn't notice him. He could at least rely on the employees to do that, they didn't notice anything or anyone, unless they had breasts. All he had was a pasted on beard and mustache.
"Can I help you sir?" asked a dull, drugged-sounding voice behind him.
In sheer surprise Chuck turned around. Jeff Barnes? The drugged tone wasn't unusual, but the attempt to help certainly was. "Uh…cheese balls," he said, trying to minimize the contact.
"Aisle three," said Jeff, sounding more catatonic than usual. "It's been a pleasure servicing you."
Chuck hastened away, well aware of where the cheese balls were kept. Possibly they were even the same ones he'd stacked before he left. No. At least, he didn't think so, not unless the stack had fallen down at least once and he wasn't discounting that possibility. He reached up and slowly, carefully, lifted the topmost barrel off the stack. He turned, ready to make his escape.
"Well, well, well," said a tall, thin, pasty-faced man in managerial gray. Emmet Milbarge, the only employee in the store who looked unchanged, and didn't that just speak volumes about the man's character. "What do we have here?" he said, leering at Chuck.
Escape was out, Emmet had already gathered his flock, ghouls swarming around any possible scrap of good publicity. Cameras were already out, recording the scene. Chuck did the only thing he could do, stood up straight and removed his glasses.
"Bartowski?" said Emmet in disbelief, and the cameras, thankfully, went away. "Look at you! Come hither, everybody, come hither."
Emmet gestured at Chuck, not nicely. "Take a gander, breathe the perfume." He leaned in and took an exaggerated sniff. "Look at the big shot, come back to laugh at you, the poor hardworking inhabitants of Buymoria." He flicked at Chuck's lapel. "I know you've all prayed for his return, but look at him. He's forgotten you." Flick.
Chuck flashed. Combat techniques. Dozens of ways to leave Emmet on the floor and he'd never see any one of them coming. His hands started to move, and Chuck fought to control the skills, when he'd never learned how.
Emmet mistook his paralysis. "He's not your champion. He left you behind." Flick.
In an instant Chuck knew everything Sarah knew about knife work. Housewares, aisle five. "Emmet, please…" Beckman was right, he was a disaster waiting to happen.
"Oh, I'm sorry, sir," said Emmet. "I'll have one of my boys carry this out to your limo." He reached for the barrel of cheese balls, something between Chuck's hands that wasn't Emmet's neck. At the touch of Emmet's cold, clammy hands, something in the back of Chuck's mind relaxed, and the barrel of snack food fell out of his hands, spilling all over the floor.
"Cleanup in aisle three," said Emmet snidely. "The rest of you, back to work." He smiled at Chuck as the crowd dissolved. "I'll send you the bill, Bartowski."
"O Captain, my Captain," said Lester, as Emmet walked away. "Are you come back to lead us once more?"
"Sic semper tyrannosaurus," said Jeff, holding out Chuck's barrel of cheese balls, freshly swept up off the floor. He sounded a little more alive, which wasn't necessarily a good thing.
"Uh, yeah," said Chuck, pushing back on the plastic tub. A greenshirt, must have been new, put a fresh one into his hands. "I'd love nothing more, guys, but I really don't think I can." Emmet Milbarge was exactly the sort of petty tyrant he'd signed on to help overthrow, but he wasn't a national security threat at the moment.
"Then at least take us with you," said Lester.
"I'll wax anything you want," offered Jeff.
"That sounds great, it really does," said Chuck with a plastic smile, "But I have to go now."
"Oh, well," said Lester, as the crowd of hopefuls turned away. "I guess there's nothing for it now but conspiracy, complacency, and eventual death. Enjoy your blonde goddess, Bartowski."
"Not that she's his anymore," said Jeff in a stage-whisper. "Her new sugar-daddy's got it all over you, Chuck."
"Wait, you've seen her?"
"Are you kidding?" sneered Lester. "When a shiksa like that falls into our gravity well–" he gestured back and forth at himself and Jeff "–she never gets out."
"We keep an eye on her, telescopes in hand," said Jeff.
"Firmly in hand," added Lester.
"That's great, guys," said Chuck, practicing his newly-discovered powers of not throttling people. "So you know where I can find her?"
Chuck returned to the Orange Orange, disappointed, tub of cheese balls firmly in hand. Since he refused to lead them in revolution, Jeff and Lester refused to give up Sarah's location. For a second he was almost tempted to eat a cheese ball or two, but he didn't know of any sin he'd committed that was great enough to deserve that kind of penance.
His instincts flared. Someone was in here with him. He crept behind the counter, plastic barrel at the ready. Not much of a weapon, but as a decoy–
A booted foot kicked out from behind the refrigerator door, striking the plastic tub and sending it flying across the room. Chuck grabbed the extended limb in his now-empty hands and lifted, dropping the unknown kicker onto his back among the yogurt toppings.
As a decoy, they excelled.
"Ah!" growled the attacker. "Garramit to hell!"
"Casey?" said Chuck, noting three separate points of identity in that one utterance. Plus the attack-first-ask-questions-maybe style of greeting.
"Yeah. Give me a hand up, Bartowski," growled the big man. "Who knows where this floor has been." Once he was vertical he favored Chuck with a sharp nod of approval. "Good job with that bucket, suckered me right in." He tapped Chuck in the shoulder, hard. "Don't do it again."
"I didn't do it the first time," said Chuck. "What are you doing here, Casey?"
"You'd better mean here in Castle, Bartowski, anything else would be insulting. As for why I'm here, in Castle, it's because someone who was supposed to be in Castle wasn't in Castle." Casey grabbed Chuck by the collar and dragged him into the freezer, putting his hand on the scanner. "As the nearest person cleared to be in the same room as you when you're working, I was tasked to come over here and find out why you weren't working." The door opened and he pulled Chuck onto the stairs.
"Uh…Ellie…cheese balls…" said Chuck, gesturing back at the room they were leaving.
Grunt #1. "One of these days, Bartowski, you're really gonna have to learn how to say no to a woman." Casey's phone rang, and he checked the screen on the way down. "Speaking of which…Yeah, Walker, I'm here."
"Can I talk to her?" asked Chuck, and Casey angled his body so the phone was on the far side of it.
"No, he just disobeyed a direct order from the General to get some disgusting snack food for his sister. Got all the way to the Buy More and back on his own, too. Guess that training from your CIA charm school was good for something." At the base of the stairs he pivoted, moving Chuck around to toward his work station and letting him go, with velocity. "I'm on my way back now, don't start the mission without me."
"Mission?"
"Yeah, numb-nuts, a mission," said Casey, putting his phone away. "I'm not in LA for the cuisine, although I hear the paella is to die for." Casey paused, and then snarled, "Just do me a favor, Bartowski, and stay in your hole." He went back up the stairs and out to the Double-O, setting the barrel of cheese balls at the head of the stairs before sealing the door behind him.
Chuck stayed in his hole, typing slowly, thinking fast.
Chuck walked up to the door of El Bucho with enough swagger to get the rope line opened for him without a word being spoken. Heads turned around the room. Casey, behind the bar as usual, was looking the wrong way for the grand entrance, but Sarah was not.
"Casey, Chuck's here," said her voice in her partner's ear.
He wasn't at all surprised, turning slowly, as if he was simply following the mood of the crowd. Chuck stood behind him, dazzling in his Armani. "Good evening, sir. Would you care for a drink?"
"Yes," said Chuck. "Yes I would. I'm here for the paella, I hear it's to die for."
"Of course, sir," said Casey, still burning over his slip. "Seafood paella is our specialty," he said, both because it was true and because he wanted to see how Chuck handled squid. "A rioja red is recommended."
Chuck nodded. "Make it so, then."
"I'll have it sent to your table." He snapped his fingers and a waiter appeared, menu in hand.
"Very good," said Chuck, before moving into the room.
A stunning blonde in a magnificent blue dress approached them. "Kiss the girl," said the waiter in Chuck's ear.
The blonde looked up, as if just now noticing Chuck standing in her path, and she paused, lips slightly parted. Every woman there fumed jealously as the handsome prince took the beautiful princess' face in his hands and kissed her, gently but passionately. When he pulled away, Chuck could hear the faintest sigh escape from Sarah's mouth, the slightest moan of pleasure.
Then she hit him, an open-handed smack that left his cheek stinging, his eyes tearing, and his ears ringing. He could still hear her say, "Bastard", though.
"Who the hell is he?" asked a man standing behind Chuck.
Sarah stepped to the side, taking the man's arm and pulling him around Chuck to her table. "Why should I ruin your evening?"
A/N2 I actually researched paella to find out what kinds of wine went with it. I've never had squid, myself. I'm told it's chewy.