still rewatching chuck, got some more ideas :D
thanks so much for the reviews on the last one! :)
this one isn't in reference to any specific episode of Chuck, just something I thought would be an interesting idea to write in the AU of Ellie knowing his secret :D
~cosette141
Forty-four.
That had to be the record for how many flashes he'd had in one day. Not even one day - within less than five minutes.
Casey's ex-girlfriend's engagement party (where he recalled the terrifying experience of being kicked off a balcony into a pool tied to Casey) had been less than thirty flashes, but it still been a hell of a headache afterward.
This one was another fancy rich-people party in another hotel, almost all of whom were spies of some kind.
It was one flash after another, every time he glanced at a new face.
Most of the bad guys at the party were small time, so Chuck had to keep ID-ing faces until they found who they were looking for. Casey took care of the bad guy and Sarah took care of Chuck, who by that point was leaning on her and wishing Aspirin would magically appear.
After confirmation that Casey had things under control, Sarah drove Chuck home. Her concern was palpable, but Chuck knew he just needed some painkillers and sleep.
God, he just loved being the Intersect.
Chuck walked into the apartment, Sarah reluctantly having left at his request and assurance. He rubbed at his throbbing temples and headed for bed.
"Chuck?"
Chuck blinked like a hungover man blinded by sunlight. There stood Ellie, scrubs on, like she was heading for work.
"Are you okay?" she asked worriedly. "Oh no— did you get hurt?" she asked, moving to him quickly, starting to try to find an injury.
"No, no," said Chuck quickly, smiling despite himself at how much she cared. "I'm okay, not hurt." He assured her. "Just have a super bad headache."
Her brows creased. "You don't usually get headaches."
"Ah… I do…" hesitated Chuck, always wondering how much he wanted to divulge about the spy world. "Sometimes," he settled on, starting to move around her. "Have a good day at wor—"
But she stopped him, putting a hand to his chest to do so. "Chuck," she said more sternly, brows narrowing a little in the way that always got him to spill when they were kids. "What happened?"
"Nothing, honestly," said Chuck truthfully. "I'm fine. It's just… sometimes when I have a lot of flashes I get a headache, that's all." He smiled quickly. "Night."
Once again he tried to reach the bed that was practically calling his name, but Ellie stopped him again. "Flashes?" she echoed. "Like.. you mean.. the inter-thing?"
Despite the headache her terminology for it almost made him laugh. "Yeah," he said. "When I see something that triggers the information in it, I dunno, it can be a little much sometimes."
"It gives you headaches?" she asked in a small voice.
"Yeah," he said, "just sometimes. But so does fourteen straight hours of Call of Duty, so…" He shrugged.
Ellie's lips pursed thoughtfully, brows still drawn with concern.
Chuck took her hand with both of his. "I'm fine, Ellie, really. I'll get this thing out of my head soon, and then I'll be bad guy and headache-free. I promise. Please don't worry."
Ellie sighed, seeming less optimistic, but nodded. She hugged him and then left for work, and Chuck collapsed thankfully—finally—into bed.
Chuck felt the morning rays of sunlight gently pull him from another good night of sleep.
It's been a few weeks since the headache from hell, and the spy life had even been much more sparse the past few weeks. It's felt almost like a well-deserved break.
Thinking about asking Sarah if she wanted to get breakfast—as colleagues, of course…—Chuck opened his eyes to get ready for a nice, chill, relaxing da—
"Morning."
Chuck yelped, for Awesome was seated in Chuck's desk chair next to his bed, a terrifyingly short distance away from him, seemingly having just been waiting for him to wake up.
The shock sent Chuck tumbling in a tangle of blankets to the floor, and all his hopes of a relaxing morning out the window.
Heaving himself up with a deadpanned glare, heart hammering in his chest, he tiredly growled, "Would you stop doing that?!"
It had to have been the third time the man had started off conversations with him like this.
Awesome ignored the entire episode, and instead bit his lip, looking uncomfortable.
Chuck sat back on his bed. "What's wrong?"
"Ellie was out late again last night," said Awesome slowly.
"She was called back into work, right?" said Chuck, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
"Well, that's just it," he said. "I decided to swing by the hospital to bring her takeout for her break but they said she wasn't there."
Chuck blinked, more awake now. "Did she leave early..?"
"They said she was never called in," he said. "And this morning she wouldn't give me a straight answer about it when I asked and she left for work."
That wasn't like Ellie…
Before Chuck could say anything, Awesome went on, "Last week almost every night she was out meeting some 'girlfriends', but since when did she spend all night out like that? She wasn't even that social in college. She already said she would be out late with 'the girls' again tonight, and… It's just…" He looked at Chuck. "You don't think she's, I dunno…"
"No," said Chuck firmly, surely. "No, look. There's… there's another explanation—I mean, this is Ellie. She loves you."
Awesome sighed, clearly unsure about that. "Would you…" He looked at Chuck. "Would you talk to her? I… I just need to know."
Chuck swallowed, worry starting to needle him. "Yeah, of course," he said. He got up, leaving to take a shower, placing a hand on Awesome's shoulder before he left. "But I already know it's nothing you need to worry about. It's Ellie." Thinking quickly, Chuck said, "I mean, your thirtieth birthday is in less than two weeks. I bet you Ellie's out planning some crazy surprise party for you or something!" He tried for a grin that he hoped looked real.
Awesome hesitated, then as if he thought he was finally in on the secret, he grinned. "That would be awesome." He stood, looking like a weight was lifted. "I gotcha, bro." He winked. "Don't worry—I'll pretend to be surprised!"
"Great," managed Chuck through a grimaced smile, until Awesome left the room.
And then Chuck set off quickly for the shower, determined to prove himself right.
Chuck made sure Awesome left the apartment before calling Ellie.
"Ellie," said Chuck nervously when she picked up, leaning against the kitchen counter. "Uh… how are things?"
"Good," she said a little too quickly. "Why? Is something wrong?"
"No, no," said Chuck. "Uh… just, uh… wanted to know what you're doing tonight so that we could, uh…" He really needs to rehearse these things. "Get some dinner? Yeah! Dinner," he settled on.
"Um," she hesitated. "I actually can't, I took a double shift and I'll be here all night."
"But Awesome said you had plans with some friends of yours tonight," said Chuck slowly, brows kneading.
"Oh, um… right! After the double shift," she said, very unconvincingly.
"Ellie, is something going o—" began Chuck, only to be interrupted by, "I've gotta go, love you!"
The call went dead, and Chuck felt more nervousness stir inside. "Love you, too," he said to the silence.
After a moment, he made up his mind and grabbed his keys.
If she wasn't going to tell him what was going on, he was going to find out.
"And why are you asking to borrow all of this?"
Chuck hesitated, pausing as he was filling a backpack with spy gear from Castle, Sarah crossing her arms and giving him the lifted brow of death that was just as scary as when Ellie does it.
"Uh…" began Chuck, only sigh. "I'm doing Awesome a favor."
It was Sarah's turn to sigh. "Ellie's not cheating on him." she said with a little exasperation.
"I know that, but—" Chuck blinked. "Do you have proof of that?" Then— "And how did you—"
She rolled her eyes. "Chuck we surveil you, we heard the conversation you had this morning."
"Yeah, well did you hear the one where I asked Ellie about it and she lied?" His brows kneaded. "It was the worst lie I've ever heard, and Ellie doesn't lie." He looked at Sarah. "Look—I know… or I'm almost positive she'd never do anything to hurt Awesome. But something is going on and I need to know what it is."
Sarah held his gaze for a moment. Then, she relented, "Fine. But I'm driving."
Chuck and Sarah spent the next hour parked at the hospital, waiting for Ellie's shift to end.
"You're staking out your own sister, Chuck."
"Well, what else am I supposed to do? Get Casey to hook her up to that lie detector he hooked up Jill to?" asked Chuck, bordering on a hysterical tone. He let out a breath, trying to calm himself. "I'm sorry, I just… I'm worried."
Sarah's brows creased. "Chuck—"
"There she is!" he exclaimed.
They both watched Ellie walk back to her car, get in and start driving. Sarah followed—using the traditional thirty yard cushion—following her all the way to—
Sarah pulled in a parking space, both of them staring at the building in confusion. "A library?" wondered Chuck aloud.
"Strange place to meet someone for a date," mused Sarah.
They watched Ellie get out of her car with a bag that looked almost as heavy as herself.
"What on…?" began Chuck. "That's it." He unbuckled his seatbelt. "Wait here?" he asked.
She nodded, confusion and weariness in her own expression, and Chuck got out of the car, following Ellie into the library.
It took a bit to find where she was. He was half terrified to find her with some other guy, not even knowing how he was going to handle it…
When instead, he found her at a table sitting in front of a laptop and a sea of textbooks, reading intently.
Chuck felt confusion and curiosity draw him toward the table. "Ellie?" he said in shock.
Ellie jumped, doing a double-take when she saw him. "Chuck?!" she exclaimed. "Wh-what are you doing here?"
"What are you doing here?" he asked. "Awesome's freaking out and watching me sleep again, you're not on a double shift like you said you were, and honestly I'm a little—" He paused, looking at the textbooks. Cutting off his own tangent, he asked, "Are you studying… brain surgery?"
Ellie bit her lip, looking almost guilty. "Yes," she said finally. "Or… trying to," she admitted.
"Why?" asked Chuck.
Looking even more guilty, Ellie said, "I… thought I could…" A quiet shyness touched her words. "I thought maybe I could help you."
"Help…" began Chuck confusedly, only to understand. "You mean," he said slowly, "to help… get this thing out of my head?" he said in a whisper.
Ellie's eyes on the floor, she nodded. She shut one of the open textbooks rather forcefully, groaning a little. "But even after three weeks, I can't find anything and it's so confusing and I'm remembering why this was the last medical field I wanted to go into," she muttered.
But Chuck was still reeling, stuck on the shock. "You're trying to learn brain science for me?" he asked in awe. Then he saw—
He snatched a paper from the table. "Is this an application for Stanford?"
"That's where you said those... people tried to recruit you," she said with a shrug. "I saw they had classes on some sort of encoded images, but I've never been good at computer code things and—"
Chuck sank into a chair next to her. "Ellie…"
"I just want to help you," she said softly. "You're suffering." Her eyes teared a little. "I used to be able to heal anything for you. But… I can't heal this." She sniffed.
"Ellie," said Chuck, touched. "You have no idea what it means to me that you're trying to do this for me." he said honestly. "But… I think if the answer was in a brain science textbook, or even Stanford… the government would have already figured out how to get this thing out of my head by now," he said quietly.
Ellie looked at him miserably. "I know, I just… wanted to do something," she said.
"You have done something," said Chuck honestly. "Having you to talk to about all of this has kept me sane. You have no idea how horrible it was to keep this from you, and from Morgan. Just having you heals more in me than getting the Intersect out ever will."
Ellie smiled, hugging him, and he hugged her back.
"You should also know," said Chuck awkwardly, "that Awesome kinda thought you were… seeing someone else."
"What?!" she exclaimed. Then she winced and shut her eyes. "No, oh—that's…" She opened her eyes, looking utterly exhausted. "I just… I didn't know what to tell him or how to explain this and I didn't want you to know because I didn't want you to stop me…" She sighed. "I'm sorry. I handled this terribly." She looked at him miserably. "Lying is hard," she said softly.
Chuck smiled. "I know the feeling," he said, remembering how terribly he'd handled plenty of things with her in the past that he'd had to lie about. Sobering, he said, "But look, Ellie. Leave the deception to me," he said, feeling himself echoing Sarah's past words. "I don't want my secret to ever come between you and Awesome, okay? Definitely not between you and me, either. We had enough of that," he reminded her, and she nodded, letting out a breath.
"And," said Chuck, "there's a whole department of the US government trying to figure out how to get this thing out of my head. Leave it to them, and to me, okay? I need you as my sister." He smiled.
She smiled too.
She started to pack her things and Chuck took the books and placed them in a donation bin. As they started to leave, Chuck said, "Oh—one more thing."
She looked over. "Yeah?"
"We have to throw Awesome a birthday party."