Thursday, September 30, 2010

Chapter 22: Talking Points

Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something. – Plato


Talking Points

11 NOVEMBER 2007
CHEZ BARTOWSKI/WALKER
04:39 PST


It had been the world's quietest car ride between Palo Alto and Burbank, Chuck thought. Normally, he wasn't against playing road trip games, but Awesome needed to rest for the surgery, and the others had very considerately remained quiet. Sarah had even taken the middle seat so that Awesome could recline his chair back, which meant that for the entire ride, Chuck could feel her warmth against one side of his body. She spent the first hour of the silent drive obviously trying not to fall asleep, her head bobbing forward and popping back up immediately.

Kung fu was hard work, Chuck figured. He wasn't surprised when Sarah's head finally fell back against the seat behind her, though it did give him a few tense moments when she shifted in her sleep so that her head rested on his shoulder. He knew from their travels throughout Eastern Europe that she was a light sleeper, but not now, evidently. She just burrowed in and slept like the dead. When his arm started to fall asleep, he shifted and wrapped it around her. It grew a little too warm in the car, but he could deal with that.

Even while he feared what she would have to say once he confessed everything, he envied Sarah. He would have given anything to be able to turn his brain off, but so much had happened. Jill. The library chase. Taking out a bad guy with nothing but his fists. Ellie knowing. Ellie pretty much knew he'd been in a bunker, and she knew about Sarah, and what he was doing for the government. He wouldn't have to lie to her as much. There were thousands of things to think about, millions of thing to wonder about now.

But the encounter with Bryce sat in the center of his mind and refused to let him think about anything else. So he went over the Operation Sand Wall documents in his head. They all seemed to point toward a human Intersect, which made sense. He had the very same thing in his head, after all. Except…the reports he'd hacked from his doctors in DC, the ones that had dealt with him as Patient X from behind curtains and other identity-hiding means, all of those reports had indicated surprise that the Intersect was so effective in a human subject.

If they'd designed the Intersect to be tested in human patients, why the hell were they so shocked that it had worked? He knew there was something to be said about government efficiency in that statement, but even that was a bit much.

And who was this Fulcrum group? What did they want? Chuck tried thinking the word as hard as he could, imagining it in his head, picturing every letter. He hoped to induce a flash as he had on the Santa Monica Pier, but the Intersect stayed silent. Unlike his brain. By the time they were anywhere near the Los Angeles area, Chuck had already worried the problem of Fulcrum and its mysterious lack of identity from four directions, and he had come up with nothing satisfactory.

So he puzzled over what he did know. Bryce didn't want him to tell Sarah and Casey that he wasn't a traitor because they might be Fulcrum. Which meant, Chuck thought, that Fulcrum could be anybody, if Bryce was willing to distrust his own partner, the woman who had been at his side through every scary situation the spy world offered. Fulcrum's involvement with the government must be deep and widespread, indeed, and it sounded like Bryce knew what he was talking about. So should he listen to Bryce?

True, he'd always followed Bryce's lead at Stanford. Bryce, after all, had been right about rushing a fraternity, and he'd known the best clubs, the best place to get food at drunk o'clock in the morning, where all of the good local bands were playing. But there was a huge chasm of logic between trusting a guy because he knew how to make college great, and trusting the guy who said you couldn't trust the partners that had saved your life time after time.

Maybe field operatives liked to work in a vacuum of information. Maybe they even liked all the doubt and double-talk. Chuck didn't see how that was beneficial to anybody. And if Casey or Sarah were Fulcrum…

What the hell was he thinking? Was he really doubting his partners? He'd doubted Bryce, his best friend, but Bryce had blown up a government building, stolen secrets, and had vanished into the wind. A little bit of doubt was a hell of a lot more than justifiable in this situation.

Doubting Sarah and Casey wasn't.

When they pulled into the parking lot of Ellie's building in the predawn hours, his decision had been made. He shook out his legs and stretched out his back while Awesome and Ellie stumbled away, off to sleep. He put a hand on Sarah's arm before she could follow. "Hey, you got a minute?"

He'd caught her mid-yawn. "Y-yeah. Can it wait a minute, though? It was a long drive and I have to…" She gestured toward the apartment and gave him a look that was the Sarah Walker equivalent of sheepish.

"Oh. Um, sure, take all the time you need. I'll just wait over there." Chuck nodded at the fountain.

It took her more than a minute. Chuck was left staring at the old crack in the pavement by the fountain for a good ten minutes or so before Sarah eased open her bedroom window and climbed out into the courtyard. She'd taken the time to throw on pajamas: a loose shirt and very short shorts so that her legs glowed a bit in the moonlight.

He looked away, staring hard at the crack in the pavement. Now was not the time to get distracted.

"What's on your mind, Chuck?" Sarah asked, lowering herself to sit next to him on the edge of the fountain. He had to shift his eyes again to avoid staring at her thigh. "If you're worried about how you did today, you don't need to be. You led us right to the intel, and you handled yourself with the Magnus situation. It was good work."

"That's just the thing." Chuck licked his lips, his throat suddenly dryer than Arrakis. "I didn't." He forced himself to look over—not at her legs, Bartowski!—and meet Sarah's eyes. "I don't have the disk."

"What?" She jolted. Agent Walker took over; sleepy Sarah vanished. "What happened to it, Chuck?"
Chuck took a deep breath. "Well, while Ellie and I were waiting for Awes—for Devon to pick up the car, an old friend kind of showed up."

"An old friend?"

"Bryce."

Sarah said a very bad word. She was normally such a still person when not playing the ditz persona that her surging to her feet made Chuck tense. But Sarah only paced a few feet away and back. Chuck wrenched his eyes away from the flesh just below the hem of her T-shirt—well, his T-shirt, really, as she was back in the Stanford shirt from his days of yore—and watched her face carefully for clues about when his death might be coming.

"You gave important intel to a traitor, Chuck?" Sarah asked.

"Trust me." Chuck thought of the new scrapes on his knees, and the matching ones on his palms. "Not willingly. He overpowered me, Sarah. I tried to stall as long as I could so that you could get there, I really did."

"Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

"So that you could do what? He's Bryce Larkin, Sarah. He's like Kurt Wagner. You can try to hold onto him, but he just vanishes." Chuck pushed his aching hands through his hair. "And I couldn't say anything in front of Ellie and Awesome."

"You could have sent me a text message so that I could have made an excuse or sent Casey after him. He's vanished back into the ether by now, and we'll never find him." Sarah scowled. "Also, for future reference, I can read lips. It's one of my many talents."

"I'm sure." Chuck licked his lips again. "The thing is, I was letting him get away."

The frenetic energy drained out of Sarah, slowly, dangerously. All movement ceased, so that she stood still as stone underneath the street light tinting the courtyard a soft yellow. Her eyes hardened. When she spoke, her voice was deceptively quiet. "Why would you do that, Chuck?"

He'd been more afraid in his life, but never of a woman, and never of a woman in so little clothing. Logically, he knew Sarah wouldn't hurt him. She'd stopped hitting him altogether, and there'd been no repeats of the Acropolis Cold-Clock, but…

There was just too much potential for violence to be ignored.

Still, he felt himself shrug. And even though all of the moisture in his throat had vanished, he said, "Because he's not a traitor, Sarah."

"Chuck, just because you want something to happen doesn't mean it's—"

"Operation Sand Wall."

Chuck watched her face carefully. She was an excellent spy, good at dissembling or diverting when she needed to. But her eyes had a hard time lying, especially to him. Relief flooded through him when he saw nothing but angry puzzlement now. She hadn't been in on it; Bryce had been acting alone. Sarah hadn't lied to him.

"What?" she asked now.

"It's a Top Secret CIA mission, docket number 20605, proposing practical applications for the database system known as the Intersect. It's also a detailed evacuation plan—essentially, it's how to steal the Intersect." Chuck looked away, staring into the darkness beyond the edges of the street light's reach. He could call the documents to mind with just a thought, but he didn't do so. He was too busy seeing his friend's exhausted face. "Bryce was approached by a group named Fulcrum to steal the Intersect. By the time he realized that they weren't exactly kosher, he was too far in. He sent the Intersect to me because, and this is all supposition here, so don't quote me, being in the bunker, it was very likely I was the only one he thought he could trust." Chuck's smile turned bitter. "Not like much could reach me in the bunker."

"I did," Sarah said.

Chuck shrugged. "But you're Sarah Walker."

"Chuck, I'm not one of your comic book heroes." Sarah crossed her arms over her chest. She let out a slow breath and turned away, but Chuck could see her hands shaking. "Everybody can be broken, and under the right circumstances, everybody can be a traitor."

Chuck shook his head. "You're not Fulcrum. You wouldn't hide something like that from me."

Sarah stayed quiet for so long that nerves started to jump through his midsection. Had she been lying to him? Was she indeed Fulcrum? Was that what Bryce had been worried about?

But finally, she shook her head and met his eyes, squarely. "I'm not Fulcrum. I've never even heard of them," she said at length.

"Bryce asked me not to tell you or Casey about Operation Sand Wall."

"You flashed on it? It's a real operation?" Sarah asked, moving toward him. She hesitated before she sat next to him. She kept her voice too modulated to sound hopeful. He knew better. The shaking hands and the bright eyes alone told him otherwise. He could understand the feeling. He'd felt horrible at the thought of Bryce, his best friend, being a traitor, and Bryce had meant a lot more than that to Sarah. Personally or professionally, he still wasn't sure, but that didn't matter.

So he nodded and tapped his temple. "I flashed on all of it, and I think I can find it now that I know the project name. I spent the drive home reviewing all of the documents. I'll pull the hard copies off of the servers for you and Casey tomorrow—well, later today, really. And I want to start looking into this Fulcrum group. I think Bryce has been having a rough time with them, and if he's in trouble, I want to help."

"Of course you do." Sarah pushed her fingertips against her eyelids. "Chuck Bartowski, saving the world, one broken spy at a time. We're going to have to tell Casey, you know."

"I know." And frankly, the thought terrified him.

"And he's going to be pissed about you losing the intel."

"I know that, too."

"Don't be surprised if he tries to use you as a punching bag instead of Frank."

"You'll protect me, right?" Chuck deliberately batted the puppy dog eyes he'd always used to bribe cookies out of Ellie.

"From Casey?" Sarah scoffed. "You're on your own there, bucko."

"Bucko?"

"Shut up about the nicknames." Sarah sobered abruptly. "Did Bryce say what he wanted with the intel? Is it about Fulcrum? Fleming's still critical, so we can't ask him what it is."

Chuck shook his head. "He only said that Fleming wanted him to have it, was all. It could be anything from secret Stanford spy traditions to cheat codes for 'Missile Command.' Who knows?"

"I guess we won't." Sarah looked troubled, but she sighed and rubbed the back of her neck with one hand. Chuck could sympathize. Even with her nap on the way home, she had to be exhausted. Hell, he hadn't even gone through a kung fu exhibition, and he could feel weariness dragging at his limbs. But Sarah didn't complain. She just had him walk her through the entire encounter with Bryce, going over everything twice.

When he had finished, she stayed quiet for a moment. "I'd like time to think about all of this, but we do have to let the others know. I'll send a report to Casey and the Director and the General over the secure connection, and then we can both deal with the fall-out when they wake up. Why don't you go inside and get a few hours' sleep?"

"Thanks, but," Chuck rose to his feet, "I'd rather head back to the Bachelor Pad, I think. Ellie's couch gives me a crick in the neck."

"You wouldn't have to—okay. You'll be okay driving home?"

"It's only a few blocks. I'll be fine."

"Before you go, let me see your watch." Sarah held out a hand. When Chuck passed it over to her, she turned it and pointed at a small red button. "See this? This is called a panic button."

"Sarah, I know what a—"

"The next time Bryce just happens to drop in on you, your job is simple. I don't care if he's a traitor or not. You see him, you press the damn button. The only time you are exempted from pressing said button is if all of your fingers have been cut off, and if that's happened, I still expect you to try and use whatever nubs are left. Use your damn nose if you have to. Just push. The. Button. Do you understand me?"

When a woman had that look in her eye, there was only one proper response. "Yes, ma'am."

"Good." Sarah handed the watch back. "Now, go home, get some sleep. I'll see you in the morning." Chuck gave her a look. "Okay, later in the morning. Happy?"

"Very," Chuck said.

"Good. Good night, Chuck."

But as she turned to go back in through her window, Chuck remembered the other reason that could possibly make him a dead man. "Um, Sarah?"

She sighed. "Yes, Chuck?"

"Just one thing I didn't tell you."

Sarah's head lolled back on her neck: tired exasperation. She was at the end of her rope, he knew. But he couldn't leave until he fulfilled his promise to Ellie. "It can't wait?"

"No, it can't. I'm sorry."

"Fine, but make it quick. I'm not sure how much more I can handle." Sarah waved for him to get on with it.

"Um, so, I talked to Ellie today, and she asked me a question, and…" Another deep breath. His next words came out in a rush: "She knows I'm a CIA agent, but not about the Intersect or anything, just that I've got important intel and that Pacific Securities is really just a front."

Sarah gaped.

"Oh, and she knows about you, too. Actually, that was how she figured it all out. I talked her down so that she won't kick you out or anything, but maybe you could talk to her, smooth things over? She's a really forgiving person, I promise, and once you come clean with her, too, you'll probably get along famously." Chuck gave her a panicked smile. "And anyway, that was all I wanted to say. Since you're tired and all, there'll be plenty of time to talk about it tomorrow, right? Good night, Sarah!"

And like the wise man that he was, he ran for it.

12 NOVEMBER 2007
CASTLE: UPSTAIRS
10:12 PST


"Just got off the horn with DC." Casey propped his feet up on the corner of Chuck's desk, one dirty boot-heel at a time. Each thud made Chuck's organized soul flinch just a little, but he kept his face neutral. Ever since Casey had discovered his bordering-on-OCD ways of keeping his desk clean, it had been…well, it had been like Christmas come early for Casey. And since the burlier man was more than a little frustrated and pissed off at both of his CIA teammates…

Chuck foresaw a lot of cleaning muddy boot-prints off of his desk in the nearby future.

"Yeah?" he asked, keeping his attention focused on the ID photos he'd been browsing all morning. "What'd Washington have to say? Any more reveals on Sand Wall or are they still pointing fingers about who started it? Because let me tell you, nothing really gets my day going like the news that not a single higher-up knew about a major mission that took out an entire building and, oh yeah, has everything in the world to do with me and what's in my head."

"The news about the op just broke yesterday," Casey said. "Washington always takes a little while to get their thumbs out of their collective asses."

Chuck skipped forward to a new page of ID photos.

"Of course," Casey said, going on, "we could probably know a hell of a lot more about Operation Sand Wall if you hadn't let the primary source of knowledge get away without a trace." He leaned forward, lightning quick, and smacked Chuck upside the back of the head.

Chuck jolted forward and scowled. "For the last time, Casey, there wasn't—"

"You don't know that." Casey stabbed a finger at him. "The next time something like that happens, you are on your phone right away, calling me. I don't care what time of the day it is, I don't care who's nearby. You call me. Need a code phrase? Tell me you need some friggin' gelato. That can be a damned code phrase."

"Gelato, Casey? Really?"

"Girly enough for you, Bartowski?" Casey crossed his arms over his chest and glared.

Chuck sighed. After arriving home from Stanford the day before, he'd slept for far too long and therefore hadn't gotten a good rest that night. He hadn't had time to pursue leads on Phillip Dartmoor, he hadn't really gotten to talk to Sarah. His two minute phone call with Ellie had also resulted in her tersely asking him to give her more time, which meant that he had no idea where he stood with her. And to top it all, his hands ached like nothing else, which only steeled his resolve that he was never taking up boxing. Let others kill their knuckles on other people's faces. He'd stick to his morning Tai Chi and weight lifting routines—and running around the park when he could force himself to go outside. He wasn't anywhere near Sarah's pace, and probably wouldn't be for years, but it was getting to the point where he didn't want to die after the first half mile. No, that part came after the second half mile.

He saved his progress on the ID photos. "How many times am I going to have to apologize for this? I made a decision, yes, it was the wrong one, but we know Bryce isn't a traitor now."

"Suspect," Casey said, glowering. "We suspect Larkin isn't a traitor. There's no way to be sure. Well, there's one way to be sure, but you let him get away."

"So what you're saying is: a lot. I'm going to have to apologize a lot." Chuck rolled his eyes and, since Casey was doing it anyway, propped his own feet on the edge of his desk. "I'm sorry, Casey. I should have called you."

"Next time, do so. I don't care if your hands have been cut off and you have to dial with your nose."

Chuck jolted at hearing Sarah's words repeated from the NSA. "You know, they have a thing called voice dial—why am I even bringing that up? If my hands have been cut off, let's be real, Casey, I'm going to be on the ground screaming like a little girl."

Casey shrugged in a way that indicated the visual wasn't entirely unpleasant to him.

"What did Washington want?" he asked.

"Your paperwork came through." Casey reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded wad of paper, which he tossed in front of Chuck. "That's your new dossier. It's closer to your story than your first dossier was because this is a government-appointed shrink."

"Wh-what?" Chuck unfolded the paper.

"Didn't you know? Your rep's appointed shrinks all bowed out on your case, so General Beckman stepped in. You're meeting with Dr. Anton this afternoon. Unlike me, they'll pay him to listen to you, so—what are you doing?" Casey frowned when Chuck abruptly put his feet on the floor and began to type.

"Googling him."

"Why the hell are you doing that?"

"Because I really don't want to walk into his office and meet your long lost twin brother." Chuck shook his head. "If that happens, I'm definitely going to need therapy."

Deliberately, Casey leaned forward and flicked a fleck of mud off of his boot and onto Chuck's desk. Right, Chuck thought, trying to ignore the speck, not anywhere near off the hook yet. Probably won't be for a couple of years.

"Your appointment is at two. To ensure that you get there, I'll be driving you." Casey folded his arms across his chest. "And I'll wait in the car until you're done getting your kumbaya-yas out."

"I can drive myself," Chuck said.

"Don't care. You're under twenty-four hour protective detail until they get to the bottom of this Sand Wall thing." Casey's grin turned strangely feral. "Get used to having Walker and me breathing down your neck."

"Where is Sarah, anyway? She's usually in by this point." Chuck glanced around his office, as though Sarah would have appeared out of the woodwork or beamed in from the Enterprise. He checked his watch to be sure. "Well, okay, she's usually downstairs by now, trying to kill Frank."

"DC."

The walls groaned and moved inward an inch. "W-what?" Chuck asked. "Sarah's gone? When?"

"She took the Red-Eye out of LAX last night."

"Why wasn't I told about this?"

"Because I'm telling you now."

Chuck swallowed hard. "How long's she going to be in DC?"

"Relax, princess, she's coming back on the evening flight, she'll be in at eleven." Casey rolled his eyes. "Should've known I'd be dealing with this when they said I'd be working with a couple of spooks. We're leaving at one fifteen, so be ready to go."

He strode out of Chuck's office. Then, and only then, did Chuck reach for the cleaning supplies he kept in the bottom drawer. As he wiped the heel-prints away, he frowned. He hadn't thought to ask Casey why Sarah had gone to DC. It had only seemed to matter that she was gone at all. And losing that sort of objectivity was a bad thing, especially when he had two people relying on him to keep up his leg of the tripod. He'd have to do better in the future.

The walls shrank just a little more. Chuck ignored it by wondering what Sarah was doing in DC.

12 NOVEMBER 2007
THE CROWN VIC
15:08 PST


Chuck climbed into the front seat of the Crown Vic, closed the door, and sat silently. He didn't bother to greet Casey. He merely pulled on his seat belt. In the driver's seat, Casey put down his newspaper and grunted. He put the car in drive and pulled out of the parking garage.

"You want to talk about it?" he asked after five minutes had passed.

Chuck shrugged. In truth, there was really nothing to talk about. Gwen Davenport and the government wanted him to go to therapy, so he'd gone. And even though he wanted to get better…

"I didn't talk to him," he said.

Casey grunted. "What's his secret?"

"What?"

"I personally can't get you to shut up, so I want to know—what's his secret?"

"Maybe I just like you less." Chuck pushed his head back against the headrest and let it bob with the motion of the car. "Can we stop at a drive-thru? I'm starved."

They pulled into the first one Casey passed. After they'd placed their order, and the car idled at the window, Casey sighed and rubbed his forehead. Chuck recognized the look well. He'd seen it several times. He called it the "Damn it, Bartowski's making me have human feelings again" look. "Why didn't you talk to the shrink?"

Chuck shrugged. "He's a government appointed shrink. He's just going to turn around and report everything I say to his higher-ups. If that's their version of help, thanks but no thanks."

Casey handed a twenty up to the delivery window and passed Chuck a bag of food with grease spots on it. Drinks followed. "You don't think this guy can actually help?"

Chuck focused his attention on unwrapping straws for both of them, and poking them through the slots on the lids. "Not willing to try my luck and get burned," he said without looking up.

After a moment, Casey grunted. "Guess I can understand that."

Casey pulled the car out of the drive-thru and into traffic. Since he'd left the radio off, silence reigned over the Crown Victoria. Finally, Chuck cleared his throat. "You've seen a lot, haven't you, Casey?"

"A lot of what?"

"Um. You know."

Casey glared at him. "No, I don't know. What are you talking about?"

"Decorated soldier like you, you must have seen some pretty bad things over the years. Bad…stuff…" Chuck trailed off lamely and scrubbed his hands over his face. He really should take a nap soon, or he'd be no good to anybody. He'd never realized how exhausting watching a clock for fifty minutes could be. "Geez. What I'm saying is, and please don't punch me in the throat, but have they ever made you go into therapy?"

Casey gave him what Chuck had privately begun to call the John Casey Special—two parts frustration, three parts rage, all Casey. Said look usually preceded the threat of violence, though there was only a fifty-percent chance of a follow-through occurring.

This was one of Chuck's lucky days. Casey's glare tapered off into a grunt. He turned his face back toward the road, tapped the steering wheel a couple of times.

"Yeah," he finally said.

Chuck, who'd turned his attention to his burger, almost sent food down the wrong pipe. He coughed and thumped his chest with the side of his fist. "W-what?"

"Yeah, they made me go to therapy once." Casey's fingers jerked on the steering wheel. "Okay, not once. Twice. Had to get cleared."

"And did you talk?" Chuck asked.

For a couple of minutes, it didn't seem like Casey would answer. The other man just continued to drive, his attention focused both on the road and on his French fries. Finally, he grunted. "Yeah, I talked."

"Really?"

"Had to. Job requirement."

"Even though you knew he was just going to report everything about you to some bureaucrat?"

Casey slanted a sideways look at him. "What's the matter, Bartowski? You think what's in that head of yours is too special for some government bureaucrat to hear about?"

"Intersect aside?" Chuck waved that off before Casey could come back with some acidic retort. "I guess that's Casey language for 'the universe does not revolve around you, Chuck. Get over yourself.' Heh. Guess I should just talk to Dr. Anton next time."

"I didn't say that." Casey kept his eyes on the road. "At the end of the day, everybody has a choice. It's your brain, you decide what you do with it—though if you're taking suggestions, I could get behind the concept of adding shutting up more often to the list."

"Thanks, Casey." Chuck rolled his eyes.

"Pilots hate to go to the doctor," Casey went on. When Chuck gave him a confused look, he tilted an eyebrow, a signal that Chuck should keep his mouth shut and listen. "Going to the doctor means there's something wrong with them, that they can't do their jobs because of medical trouble. Sometimes you get a pilot putting off going to the hospital so much that he makes the problem worse—worse enough to get him kicked to another job for medical reasons."

"Irony," Chuck remarked, wondering where this story was going.

"It's like that with psych evals. You don't want to go in because the doc might find something wrong with you, something that'll get you kicked out of the Agency or put behind a desk somewhere." Casey shifted his shoulders, thoroughly uncomfortable now. "A lot of people go in bitter, angry. The psych-heads are used to that. But, and I'm only going to say this once, Bartowski, so pay attention: they can help. And they don't put the nitty-gritty details in those reports, just so you know. Just about whether you're cleared for duty or not."

"So if you say they can help…did they help you?"

Casey snorted. "Hell, Bartowski, I was always the exception. I didn't need help. My headspace has always been right where it belongs."

"In a realm that would give Cthulhu nightmares?"

Casey pulled the Crown Vic into Castle's parking lot and glared. "We've talked about the nerd speak," he said, a slight growl flavoring his words.

"Oh. Hm, yeah, you're right. Sorry, I can't help myself sometimes." Chuck fished in his pocket for his phone as it rang, and took a deep breath when he saw the view-screen. Though she'd made it perfectly clear that she wasn't angry with him about the Bryce or Ellie situations, he still felt nerves writhe through his midsection. "It's Sarah. Anything you want to tell her?"

"Tell her to pick me up a soft-shelled crab sandwich." Casey grabbed the fast food bag and his drink, abandoning the car as Chuck took a deep breath and answered the phone.

"Tell Sarah you want her to give you crabs. Check. Hey, Sarah," Chuck said the last into the phone, dodging expertly. Casey growled and stalked away. "How's DC?"

"Oh, good, Casey told you." Sarah sounded both relieved and exhausted. "I thought for sure he'd just 'forget' to mention it, and leave you wondering."

"Maybe next time. Why didn't you tell me?"

"Orders came in pretty late, and I didn't want to wake you."

Chuck rolled his eyes when Casey closed the front door of Castle before he could reach it. He moved over to key in his code. "Don't worry about waking me up. Or you could just send a text."

"Okay. Next time, I'll do that." Wherever Sarah was, it sounded busy. Chuck could hear voices in the background, which made it a little hard to hear her. "This is the first chance I've had to get away today, and I've only got a couple of minutes. They think I'm in the bathroom."

"So you sneaked out to call me?" Chuck couldn't stop the grin. "Look at you, breaking the rules for little old me."

"I wanted to know how your therapy session went."

Though she couldn't see him, Chuck shrugged. Dr. Anton had seemed like a nice guy—boring, mid-forties, bland—but the session had been Chuck staring at the clock after they'd been introduced. "It was fine," he lied.

"Did you like the therapist?"

"He looks nothing like you or Casey. I'm good. Why're you in DC?"

A tired sigh on the other end of the line. "Briefings. Back to back briefings. Lots of things to discuss, lots of wheels suddenly in motion. I'm just glad Graham stepped in and said they could only have me for a day. Otherwise, they'd probably keep me for a month."

Chuck felt something punch through his stomach.

Sarah, across the country, seemed to sense his unrest at that thought. "I'm coming home tonight," she said. Though her tone was purposely light, Chuck knew better. He inwardly kicked himself for being so pathetic and needy.

If Sarah could keep it light, so could he. "What's your flight number?" he asked as he dropped into his desk chair. "I could come get you."

"Oh, no, Chuck, you don't have to do that. I can just get a car service."

"I don't mind. It'd give us a chance to catch up." Clear up any lingering awkwardness, he added silently, as they still had a thousand things to discuss about Ellie alone.

"All right." She was apparently on the same wavelength, for she said, "I need to talk to you before I see Ellie. If you really don't mind coming to get me, that is."

"It'd be my pleasure. Where should I meet you?"

They made the arrangements quickly, as Sarah had to hurry back to the meeting. It was only after they'd hung up that Chuck remembered Casey's request. He shrugged and sent a text message off. Oh, forgot to mention that Casey wants you to pick up a soft-shelled crab sandwich.

A couple of minutes passed while he went through the security protocols on his computer and collected his assignments for the afternoon. As he pulled shipping manifests up on screen, his phone buzzed. New text from Sarah.

Of course he does. Want one, too?

No thanks. Shellfish that's flown commercial gives me the willies.

Ha. Gotta go. See you tonight.

Feeling much better, Chuck settled in to work.

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