A/N: I must have been about 8 years old and I remember discussing the movie E.T. I overheard someone talking…about the fact that in the book, they were M&Ms, not Reese's Pieces. What? Book? My world opened up…and I was never the same. I may be in the minority, but I know I'm not the only one who likes to read novelizations of movies and tv shows. They print those books for a reason. I read all of the novelizations of all three classic seasons of Star Trek, plus also the novelizations of the animated Star Trek series. I grew up going to the book whenever I saw a movie and knew there was related prose. I understand this story may not be everyone's ideal, but for those of you invested, I still say thank you for reading. If you are still here, you are among the group of us who knows the book is always better than the movie. Not every episode needs a deep dive, but there is forward momentum in every episode, which is just one of the reasons why I love this show so much. Once you watch Chuck through to the end, it all makes sense, but without dramatic irony there, Sarah was always painted as a mystery. This story was what my brain was doing as I watched to solve some of that. Anyway, this is part two of Helicopter. My goal is balancing dialogue and original thoughts. Hope that is how it reads.
I drove away from Chuck's apartment, the image of him turning back to wave at me before I left still burned behind my eyelids as those thoughts pummeled my brain.
I was still sleep deprived, not yet caught up after only sleeping a few hours the previous night, but my anxious thoughts interfered with my rest. I tossed and turned for a while, although I did eventually fall asleep. I know this because I remembered the dreams I had. All of them had been about Chuck.
Just so you understand, we did have to do some basic psychology study at the Farm. Dreams, for the most part, were just an amalgamation of the experiences of our days, intermingled with emotions either felt or repressed. More dynamic dream interpretation, dream symbols, all of that, was merely conjecture, more like astrology than anything else. What I learned then seemed to make sense. After a harrowing mission, one in which I'd had to shelf my emotions to be dealt with later, I could experience strange dreams. But at the same time, dreams that could elicit the emotions I hadn't been forced to acknowledge during my waking hours. Dark shadows and haunted screams when I had been afraid, my mother's face when I had been lonely, Bryce's face when I had been angry.
Anything more complex than that was more than I was capable of examining at this point in my life. Nevertheless, I still dreamed. This was the first of hundreds of nights' worth of dreaming about Chuck. I could push my feelings deep down inside me, but they would find a way into the light when I was asleep.
I dreamed of being in my car with him, a repeat of the scene when I had dropped him off after our fake second date. In the dream he said the same things, asking me to come to his apartment the next night for dinner with his sister. Only in my dream, there was no pretense, no cover…just me, accepting the invitation as his new girlfriend, someone his sister desperately wanted to meet. That shy, nervous flutter of his eyes was the same in my dream as my memory. Here, in my dream, I never brought up the end of us pretending if Zarnow succeeded. Instead, I leaned across my seat and kissed him.
I have always been fascinated by how real certain dreams can feel, the sensations perceived by the brain just as accurately as if they happened in real life. Chuck always knows when he is dreaming, even within the context of his dreams. It was a phenomenon he told me he had experienced since he was young, but it intensified after the Intersect became downloaded into his brain. The feel of his lips against mine in the dream was exquisite–soft, warm, so unbelievably gentle. That was my brain's expectation of what kissing Chuck would have felt like, for I had no frame of reference, no memory there to pull from. The first time I kissed Chuck for real was much more…a desperate and frantic situation, and the quality of that kiss was different. My dream was so detailed, I remembered tasting the coffee on his breath and the scent of his subtle cologne as I breathed close to his face. I also remembered the sound of his sigh.
I remember crashing down to earth when I woke from that dream, shaking myself after the devastation washed over me when I realized it had only been a dream. Groggy, I had chastised myself, wondering why I was dreaming about kissing my asset like that. I had never been assigned an asset like this before, but becoming emotionally entangled or even physically attracted to an asset was top of the do-not-do list. Despite that, I only eventually fell back to sleep to an even more intense dream.
We were still in my car, only things had progressed. I dreamed about having sex with Chuck. We were clothed, but I was straddling him in the front seat, grinding against him, holding his shoulders in a tight, pinching grip. My vision was dark, with my face pressed against his shoulder. I could feel his breath on my neck and the soft sounds he made in time to our rhythm. The sensations my mind had conjured from past experiences and also my imagination made it feel real (although in actuality, the real sensation of having sex with Chuck was nothing like this dream, or anything I had ever experienced before it happened, for many different reasons.) Here, I had nothing else to compare it to. I orgasmed in my sleep, a real reaction as well as a part of my dream, and it woke me.
I breathed out, the last of the pleasurable contractions lingering as consciousness returned. But reality crashed over me like a bucket of cold water. I was fantasizing about Chuck, I realized. I forced those feelings away from me, arguing with myself that I didn't really feel that way, that I couldn't. It had merely been a long time since I'd had sex, although that argument was flimsy. At this time, I had only been without access to sex for about a month. I had gone years in the past without experiences like this.
I found my mind wandering as I lay there in the dark. In the dream, I had acted the way I used to act, when I was with the CAT squad…like I had been when I had sex with Bryce for the first time. Right before this, Bryce and I had been exclusive. Could I have gone back to the way I had been before? No, no strangers in nightclub bathrooms for me, no matter how lonely I became. So why was I thinking about this?
What would have happened in the car, I thought, if I had just done what I dreamed about? Without words, without explanation…just kissed him? Crawled into his lap and freed him from his pants…offered myself to him like that? It would have gotten me reassigned and Chuck bunkered faster than I could blink, I told myself. But I couldn't ignore the hot throbbing between my legs as I laid there in the dark. I convinced myself I just wanted sex, not understanding yet that what I truly wanted was sex with Chuck. There was no way to reconcile both things in my head, not then. What would Chuck have done?
This is one of those questions that there is literally no answer to. Chuck was not promiscuous, far from it. He didn't sleep with women on first dates, didn't expect it when he paid for dinner, and never had sex merely for the sake of having it. I've asked him this before…If I had given him the option of a sexual relationship as early as this if he would have obliged me. He already had feelings for me, even this early, and I did for him as well, even though I hadn't sorted them out or even forced myself to face them or even acknowledge that they existed. I know most men, presented with me in such a state, would have taken what I was giving, and worried about it later. Chuck, as wonderful as he is, is still a human male. I tend to think as long as he made sure I was consenting, that I was 100 percent sure that was what I wanted, that he would have. He would not, however, have agreed if he thought that one instance was all…never letting himself become involved in a one night stand. His heart was too pure for that kind of interaction.
There was always the idea of that double standard—he would have sex with me, but think me cheap or whorish for indulging my own desires. However, that was not Chuck, ever, for any reason. He was technically raised by his sister, and she made sure he was respectful at all times. Chuck always was, almost to a fault. Here–he had been without the experience for over four years, so the idea may have been too tempting to refuse had I made that move.
The first time Chuck and I had sex, we were in love. We made love, we just didn't have sex. I can't think of Chuck any other way than how he was with me, how he is always when we're like that. It's pure conjecture, but I truly believe even here, if I had thrown myself at him, the way he would have been with me would have been the same. Touching me, holding me, studying me for the sake of ensuring he knew exactly how to please me. About me and only me.
I don't know how I would have been in that same situation. Would my feelings have risen to the surface, so they were suddenly undeniable? I can't imagine the sex itself being what made me realize I loved him. That feeling was too deep, too soulful to be influenced by sex. Being intimate with Chuck was a physical representation of how I felt about him…needing to be close to him, merged with him, part of him.
Besides all that, I do also see how maybe he might have refused, worried that he seemed to be taking advantage of me. Maybe he would have balked at doing that with the professional nature of our relationship. Or that he thought more highly of me, wanting to be more respectful of me, though I deserved none of that then, I knew. When I try to place it in the proper time context, I can't imagine what Chuck would have thought if he knew everything about me and my life up to that point. Out of context completely, I know Chuck became aware of much worse than my sexual exploits, and never once did it affect how he thought or felt about me.
That strange fantasizing was interrupted when I got a call from Graham, telling me that Zarnow had been killed in a car bomb on his way out of Los Angeles County. He wanted me to report to the scene, as he believed the entire situation was suspect. I rushed to get ready, realizing even as I did so that whatever hopes Chuck and the rest of Operation Bartowski had for this to be over soon were ruined. Zarnow was the best hope Chuck had…and now he was dead.
I had too many conflicting thoughts, too many worries. I forced them all aside and told myself I needed to do what Graham had ordered me to do…figure out what had happened and why. Was it related to the Intersect or was it a coincidence? Again, no such thing as real coincidences, not in my experience, and thus probably not here. We would find that out soon enough.
I grabbed the newspaper on my way out of the hotel, something I always did out of habit. Being informed started with local news, and skimming the headlines sometimes helped in certain situations. Bryce's picture was on the front page, under the headline of a bank executive being killed in a robbery. It was for his cover, it seemed, although he had been in Mexico with me for the past two years. I wondered at the time who that was actually placed there for. In retrospect, though I never got a real confirmation, I'm almost certain Graham was aware all along that Bryce was still alive and had gone underground as a Fulcrum double agent. The fake funeral, the fake write up in the paper were all code, staged for a mission I knew nothing about. This was six days after his death, as I perceived it then. The next day, I was presented with Bryce's fake spy will. Par for the course, because I was not privy to his inside knowledge.
Bryce had only been dead for six days…and I was dreaming about having sex with Chuck. What kind of monster could do that? I felt terribly ashamed, despite how angry and hurt I was by what Bryce did. I didn't have the perspective I needed to place it all in line…Bryce's betrayal and then Molly and my mother…I had been encased in a hard block of ice all along and now I had begun to thaw. The warmth coming from inside me was melting the ice. It had so much to do with my mother, Molly, and even Chuck…and absolutely nothing to do with Bryce.
I reported to the scene of the explosion on a deserted road in the mountains. Casey had already been there for a long time, it seemed to me. Objectively, it made sense that Beckman would have gotten word first, since Zarnow was NSA. I made note of the fact that she seemed to have purposely waited to tell Graham, causing my late arrival. Not all was copacetic with Team Bartowski, as we would come to terms with later. I honestly don't know if things ever truly were, because Graham died less than a year later, but relations were very bad here. No one trusted each other.
I tried to casually inspect the scene without calling attention to myself. I managed to find a device in the dirt underneath the burned shell of Zarnow's car. It looked like a generic cell phone, only the back, where the battery would be, looked twisted like something had exploded forth from there. This had to have been part of the bomb, if not the entire thing. I picked it up and pocketed it without Casey seeing it. He was as suspicious of me during the brief exchange there as I was of him.
I thought whatever the device was, it could have been in the Intersect. I took it with the intention of showing it to Chuck to see if he flashed on it. I went to work in my ridiculous Wienerlicious uniform and emailed him first thing to ask him to come and look at it. As soon as he showed up, I told him under no circumstances should he allow himself to be alone with Casey. From what he said, I realized Casey had warned him the same thing already about me. I expected that from Casey. I had to give Chuck the bad news that Zarnow was dead, wondering at the same time why Casey didn't tell him. That inched Casey higher in my suspicions for choosing not to do that.
Chuck was rightfully upset, much the same way I had felt when I found out. I showed him the burnt out phone and asked him if he knew what it was. He flashed…although at this point, no one officially called it "flashing," when Chuck's brain pulled something into his short term memory from the storage in subliminal messages that made up the Intersect. He knew right away what it was–NSA incinerator, designed to remove biological traces.
I was convinced at this point that Casey was the culprit. Chuck was skeptical–he never wanted to believe the worst about anyone, even though he will tell you at this point he was more frightened of Casey than any other emotion. He started freaking out, but in my best form, I handled him once again, a little sharply this time, telling him to just go back to work and play dumb. My mind was elsewhere, not focused on how Chuck was feeling. Back this far, I had pretty good control over that. Chuck's emotions gradually increased in my purview until it was all I ever thought about, but this time it never occurred to me that I was too harsh.
Back this far also, expecting Chuck to have any filter for his emotions was also asking a lot. Apparently when he went back to the Buy More, Casey read him like a book. I know that because not ten minutes after Chuck left the Wienerlicious, Casey showed up. Neither one of us had killed Zarnow, but I thought it had to be him, and in parallel, he thought it had to be me. Process of elimination. He said specifically he was there to arrest me. It makes sense now, but then, I thought it was a ruse. I armed myself with a skewer, the only thing within reach, and pinwheeled over the counter, throwing the skewer like a knife, straight into Casey's hand. Fisticuffs, as Chuck would say, ensued.
I disarmed Casey fairly easily. I was trained in hand to hand combat, and because I was a woman and naturally smaller in stature, I had trained to use my opponent's size to my advantage. Casey, for all his military training and prowess, was a lousy hand to hand fighter. Casey was a sniper, a sharp-shooter…that was what made him special, that one thing, like everyone else I knew in the company. He was outmatched, trying to spar with me. I blocked his blows and took him down. He went for a plastic fork and I broke a broomstick in half and used it as a weapon. He came at me with a chair. I eventually kicked him over the counter. He went down like a ton of bricks.
Teenage boys, aiming to record the fight on their phones and post it on the internet, entered the Wienerlicious right as I knocked him down. I turned, and when I looked back, Casey had escaped. I called everything in to Graham, explaining what I thought had happened. He gave me instructions, told me to make sure that the Intersect was secure. That's how Graham, Beckman, and Casey referred to Chuck, for actually quite a while. It was old school, meant to protect his identity, but it also allowed them to dehumanize Chuck…the way that I was expected to do, because he was my asset. Assets were to be used and then almost always burned. Even on day one, I had no intention of doing any such thing, but it was part of the role I was playing. I kept that internal agreement with myself and myself alone.
I went to the Buy More, but one of the creepy Nerd Herders that reported to Chuck, Lester, told me he was out on a job. I called Graham back right away, telling him that our surveillance plan had never considered that Chuck, as part of his job as a Nerd Herd technician, was to go out on customer calls. Casey could provide protection inside the store, but there was no method in place for when he was out of the store. Casey's presence wasn't explainable on a computer repair and/or install. Not to mention, Casey right now was a potential threat to Chuck, based on what I'd deduced. Graham ordered me to stay put, and to follow through with the dinner I was supposed to have at Chuck's sister's apartment. He thought regardless of what else happened, Chuck would show up at his place of residence after his call.
I didn't know Casey had faked the call. Fortunately for Chuck, none of the threat both Casey and I perceived in the other was real–or the Intersect could have been lost less than a week into its trial run in the field. If Casey had been out to harm Chuck, he could have. It was just luck here, nothing else, that saved Chuck. I knew I would have to do better if we were going to make this work. I called him anyway, and the call went straight to voicemail. Slightly worried, I got ready and then went to Ellie's apartment for that dinner, bringing with me a chocolate soufflé that I had cooked in the oven at the Wienerlicious.
Ellie Bartowski was quite intimidating as she made a first impression. Seems strange coming from me, trained assassin, but I really was. She was Chuck's sister, but even at this juncture, I knew how important she was to him. I needed to remind myself once again that this wasn't real. I wasn't meeting my boyfriend's sister for the first time. But it felt like it was real…and I couldn't shake it.
I saw the family resemblance right away. Ellie had her own version of that warm smile that made me feel welcome, like I belonged, even though I didn't know her at all. Chuck's description of Devon was accurate as well. I think in the first 15 minutes, he used the word "awesome" at least three times. Both Ellie and Devon were very intelligent, friendly, and caring people. I wondered about the rest of Chuck's family, because when I looked around the apartment, all I saw were photographs of Ellie and Chuck, or Ellie and Devon. It was like no one else existed. Morgan was there, apparently having invited himself to that dinner. He was a little hard to take, I'll admit. Morgan was almost the same age as Chuck, but behaved like an overgrown teenager. He got better eventually, but here, it was almost annoying. Chuck loved him like a brother, so he tolerated a lot, even at this time.
The conversation I had with Chuck's family and friend was similar to how I had talked to him in the Mexican restaurant. I was pretending of course, making sure I stayed within the parameters of my cover, but I found myself taking every opportunity to tell the truth, or as close to it, as I could. The questions I asked them were genuine, for I wasn't mining for intelligence…I just wanted to know. Where she went to school, where she worked, how she and Devon had met. I liked them immediately, just like I had found I liked Chuck.
When Chuck finally showed up, he was a wreck. He came bursting through the apartment door, looking like he'd just run a mile. His clothes were stained and his face was smeared with dirt. He had the strangest look on his face…anxious and intense. Something significant had happened between the fight and now, I thought. Chuck's anxiety, nervous rambling, continued as dinner progressed. It bothered me once I realized his anxiety was directed at me, or should I say, caused by me.
I found out during the initial conversation once we were all seated around the table, from Morgan, that Bryce was credited with stealing Chuck's college girlfriend. It made more sense, that tightness in his voice and the sarcasm I had heard from him before he learned that Bryce was dead. Once friends, but not just lost-touch friends. Former friends. An important distinction, at least to me.
John Casey showed up in the middle of dinner. Chuck was beyond freaked out, stressed almost past his limit. My guard was up, but I had to protect Chuck's cover as best I could, so I just played along. Chuck was acting crazy, pulling the tablecloth out from under the table settings for no apparent reason. Which set fire to my soufflé, and then he grabbed it and ran it into the bathtub to put out. The entire dinner party ended up in the bathroom, watching Chuck hose down and stamp out my soufflé. I convinced Ellie to leave us alone in the bathroom.
The altercation that ensued here was probably one of the harshest interactions Chuck and I ever had, at least before the incident with Quinn. I was rough with him, forcing him against the door and demanding he tell me everything that Casey told him. He wouldn't answer right away and I banged him against the door, then twisted his arm behind his back, actually driving him to his knees. I let my emotions run away with me, something I had never done before in my life. Chuck was innocent here, torn between the two of us who didn't trust each other. I took all of that frustration out on Chuck. I know part of that emotional response was my upset over wondering what he thought about me now, based on whatever Casey had told him. It was that look I mentioned before, and the more I thought Casey might have told him, the more real the possibility that how Chuck looked at me would change. It didn't, but I was always worried that it might.
When I examine my emotional state from an objective standpoint, I know I was hurt and angry at Chuck, although it was unfounded. Hurt because he believed I had lied to him, that I was the betrayer, just like Bryce. I had asked him to trust me, but as I told you, I knew he had no reason to trust me when I asked. I knew that he did anyway…but I had taken that for granted, not realizing until this moment that in actuality, I was almost impossible to trust. I was a spy.
He knew about the Truffaut mission, that I had killed those arms dealers slash assassins with poison, which immediately explained the torched soufflé. How he knew, I wasn't sure. That was what Casey told him, but I surmised other information had been in the Intersect, what little there was about me in there. Once again, nothing about Bryce was there, which was odd, but something I didn't fixate on. It was years before I found out the real reason why.
I comprehended in the middle of that what the truth was. It was neither Casey nor I. It was Zarnow himself, faking his own death, as a way to secure the Intersect. I ran out of the dinner party to follow through on my hunch. I told Chuck to stay put and not put himself in danger. That was the first of hundreds of times where he didn't listen to me. He had a penchant for running into danger instead of steering clear of it, but always for a justifiable reason–when someone he cared about was in danger. Tonight, it was me he thought needed help.
The moment I was out on the sidewalk, Zarnow was there. He shot me with a tranquilizer gun. I woke up in an abandoned warehouse, chained at my wrists to a water valve on the ceiling, with duct tape over my mouth and around my ankles. I had no way to know how long I was out. My blouse was torn in the front, from what, I also had no idea. I was in the process of looking for a way to free myself when I saw Chuck, inexplicably, inside the warehouse with me.
He pulled the duct tape off my mouth. He looked worried, his eyes huge and his face drawn. I ordered him out of there, telling him he was too valuable to risk for me. I made the mistake of telling him I had the situation in hand. He actually made a sarcastic remark. (He was right though, one of at least a few times anyway.) I asked him to find something I could pick the lock with, but Zarow returned. I told him to hide.
This was where Chuck's inexperience reared its head, despite the bravest of intentions. He saw the needle Zarnow was going to use to tranquilize me and mumbled an exclamation that was overheard. Zarnow saw him and then saw him flash. To make it worse, Chuck blurted out what his flash informed him of. Zarnow had a positive ID on the Intersect. Primary mission failure, allowing that circle in the know to increase by one. Unacceptable.
He tranq'd Chuck. He also could have killed me while I hung there, but for whatever reason, lucky for me, he didn't. Zarnow escaped with Chuck and then Casey appeared. Casey freed me, but I told him Zarnow had Chuck…that Chuck didn't stay in the car like Casey had asked him to.
Mission by mission, I have the perspective now to talk objectively. What would have happened if Chuck had just listened to Casey and stayed put? Zarnow would have taken me out to the helicopter before Casey found me. Chuck would have been safe. Maybe I could have escaped…maybe I would have been tortured. I am certain, even here, I would've killed myself before they could have tortured his identity out of me. That was protecting him, what I promised myself I would do. In summary, if Chuck had done what I told him, he would have been ok, but I might not have been. He did that for me…and he very well may have saved my life by doing so.
I wish I'd had the ability to think from that perspective then, but I didn't.
Once I was outside with Casey, I realized after a confrontation inside the helicopter in midair, somehow that Chuck ended up flying the helicopter Zarnow had tried to use to leave. Casey tried to talk him down, but Casey, well, he's not the most calming and reassuring of people. Yelling at Chuck was not the way to approach him, although Casey, for all his spy skills, only knew how to talk one way. Once Casey put me on the phone, I was able to talk Chuck down safely.
He was quite proud of himself, overall, but I was mad as hell. I was angry, like I had already told him, that he had accused me of being a double agent, of lying and betraying my country and my duty. If I'm honest with myself, I was also angry at him the way I now get angry at my children when they do something unsafe after I have told them not to do something. Maybe angry isn't even the right word…but the sentiment is the same. You get angry because someone you would protect with your own life put theirs in useless danger for something that could have been avoided. I left him with harsh words, instead of knowing I should have thanked him for saving my life. Overall, it was one of the times I was angriest at Chuck. Here again, I had completely lost my ability to keep my emotions in check.
The next day, September 30, 2007, was Bryce's funeral, or at least what I thought was his funeral. Graham sent Bryce's spy will via courier to my hotel. I almost didn't read it. I wanted to rip it up into a thousand pieces…as if somehow that would let him know just how angry I was. That was always the hardest thing, the finality of it all, without ever knowing the reasons or being able to express myself the way I needed to. Of course, that was a fake funeral and a fake spy will, one I found out he had written explicitly for me to read. It contained minimal information, no sentiment whatsoever. Like something I would have expected him to leave for Graham's secretary. I didn't question the funeral being in L.A., blindly accepting Graham's convoluted reason he explained, which was probably just a cover for the fact that Graham was fully aware Bryce was still alive.
I didn't know who the people seated all around his casket were. I stayed back, away from the gathering, observing from a distance. What I would have done out of respect for a stranger. At this point, after having read that will early the same morning, he was just another stranger to me. The blankness inside of me was startling, but fitting.
Seeing Chuck there floored me. He was standing under a tree, also off to the side, away from everyone else, wearing a suit that didn't quite fit him properly. I think it was actually his father's suit. (Chuck had several articles of his father's clothing that he wore on occasion.) Chuck never mentioned the people there, which makes me think some of them were college friends or acquaintances who would have lived in California and generally knew who he was, those who had read that same article in the paper. Anyway, he didn't think the attendees were strange or out of place.
Chuck didn't owe Bryce anything at this point but contempt. All I knew here–Bryce had started dating Chuck's old girlfriend, potentially after having cheated with her. Bryce had sent Chuck the Intersect, a potential risk to his health and wellbeing, and literally upturned his entire life. But Chuck was there, politely paying his respects. Chuck was a good person, perhaps the best person I had ever known. Each day, like this one, only proved it to me more. There were tears in my eyes from that train of thought when Chuck noticed me. He raised his hand to wave, but I ran, afraid he would see all that emotion and misconstrue it. Chuck knew nothing of my relationship with Bryce, and it felt better to me to keep it that way.
He came to see me later that afternoon while I was working a hot dog shift. He came to apologize for not trusting me. He certainly knew how to apologize with sincerity, at the same time adding in humor, just a bit, to soften the intensity of it. Chuck always has a way with words, always knowing exactly what to say and when to say it. I apologized to him for being so harsh. He joked about our fake relationship again, which pulled me backward into that strange limbo where I couldn't get my bearings about me.
Instead, I made sure he understood now that the NSA and CIA's quick fix for his problem was a no go, more was going to be asked of him. I wanted to make sure he was up for the task, considering his inexperience had caused a lot of the problems from the night before. He looked nervous, but he agreed.
The evening ended up with a redo of the botched dinner from the night before, at the Wienerlicious. Morgan, Ellie, and Devon were there. Chuck made the silliest face and I laughed, heartily, true laughter from deep inside me. He ate a burnt corn dog, pretending like it was a gourmet meal I had cooked. It was honestly the sweetest thing imaginable.
That entire interaction, including a rude interruption by my boss, Scooter, was nothing but enjoyable. We ate and laughed and talked. I almost forgot that I was a spy, and that this was just my job…because I felt instead like I had been inducted into a makeshift family.
It was nothing I could ever let myself feel like I wanted or needed. No matter, I did want it and I did need it. I gravitated towards it because of that. One of the many holes inside me felt fuller, partially healed, instead of just bandaged over, for the very first time in my life.
Courtesy of Chuck Bartowski and his family.
