Chapter 2- Attempt to recover

A/N- I really hope I got this right, because if I didn't you might be forming a mob…

Sarah woke with a start. She'd had a fitful dream, but felt better as she gazed into slumbering form of her lover. She ran her hands through his curly hair and felt him begin to stir beneath her. "Sarah, I'm really tired are you really ready for another round already?"

"Yes Steve I am, but I guess I can find someone else." She said as she looked at the guy she had picked up at a bar earlier that night. Shortly after her first night alone she fell into a pattern:

Go through her day regularly.

Head out to a bar.

Pick up a guy.

Screw him.

Screw him again.

Shower.

Dress.

Return home or

If early enough return to bar and find another guy.

Fuck him.

She fell into the routine quickly, it was easy and didn't require that much effort; she was after all a beautiful woman practically offering free sex to the first guy to approach her. She couldn't remember how many guys she slept with since Chuck had left, not that she wanted to know in the first place, and she couldn't even guarantee that she hadn't hooked up with anyone she knew. If Jeff had been at one of her bars she doubted whether she would have actually turned him down.

Casey knew what she was doing, but apart from a disgusted look he hadn't said anything. They generally avoided each other since they didn't really need to talk, but one night a couple of months into her routine he'd come to her hotel room to inform her of a briefing the next morning. She was lucky that she'd just gotten home, but when he got one look at her Casey had crinkled his nose.

"Jesus Walker you smell like cheap booze and sex what have you—" He stopped as he realized why she had been subdued lately, it wasn't depression over her Chuck's departure as he had assumed but a hangover, and why she hadn't been in contact after hours or at her apartment when he'd gone to check up on her—Casey wasn't blind he knew what had been going on between her and the asset and wanted to make sure she was handling it—at night.

The unmistakable figure of a man sleeping in her bed eliminated any further doubt from his mind. He immediately adopted a pitying look at only served to enrage the CIA agent. "Why the hell are you interrupting my night?" She spat.

"We have a briefing in the morning." Casey announced before turning and leaving. He didn't want anything to do with her. He had avoided her like the plague after that incident so she was rather surprised when he'd shown up at her door again to announce a briefing.

At that briefing Beckman had ordered them to put surveillance on someone named Gilles and Beckman indicated that Chuck might soon be returning.

While the new assignment meant Sarah could no longer spend her nights bar hopping, but she decided that rather than simply bug Gilles room, office, and phone she'd treat him like a mark, seduce him, and become his girlfriend. The whole thing was really unnecessary, but when Chuck returned it would probably kill him to see her with another man.