Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Chapter 41: The Couch Most Ravenous

Deep listening is miraculous for both listener and speaker. When someone receives us with open-hearted, non-judging, intensely interested listening, our spirits expand. – Sue Patton Thoele

The Couch Most Ravenous

16 DECEMBER 2007
DAVENPORT ESTATE
14:18 EST


As much as Chuck was dreading whatever Sarah wanted to talk about, it had to wait. Sarah had succumbed to exhaustion on the way back to the Davenports' and fallen asleep in the backseat of the Crown Vic. She'd looked sheepish about it when Chuck had gently shaken her awake, but he'd told her to go take a nap, they could talk later. The look of gratitude had been worth it, but two hours later, he'd driven himself halfway to insane trying to figure out exactly what Sarah was going to say, and fretting over Bryce. He knew Bryce was staying in a hotel, and they would see him again Monday, but what happened then? What did going deep undercover entail? Would it mean late night meetings alone with Sarah to deliver information? And what the hell had happened between Bryce and Sarah, really?

Chuck planted himself at the dining room table with a magazine and hoped somebody would wander by in the mood to talk. All of the Davenports were home, as well as the Prometheus members, but everybody seemed to have scattered. Chuck nursed a Red Bull for nearly twenty minutes before he heard footsteps.

"Oh, hey! There you are!" Awesome approached from the garage. "Perfect, we need a fourth."

Chuck looked up from the magazine. "A fourth what?"

"Teammate. B-Ball, dude."

Chuck glanced at the sliding glass door. It hadn't snowed in nearly a week, but the world just looked frozen. "Are you immune to cold or something? Is that your superpower?"

"Won't be cold for long. C'mon, Chuckster. Get outside, play some ball. Get that blood pumping."

Chuck sighed. He was still in slacks and the button-up shirt from his meeting with Graham and Beckman. And it was so freaking cold outside. "Yeah," he said. "Give me five minutes."

"Excellent." Awesome held his hand up for a high-five. Chuck dutifully obliged him on the way up to his room.

He came down to find that he was no longer the fourth, but the sixth. In addition to Russ and Nate, Awesome had convinced Gwen and Ellie to join them at the blacktop half-court in the driveway. The teams were divided: Chuck was put with Awesome and Gwen.

He was a fair basketball player. Being in a frat and being tall meant that he'd been asked to play on intramural teams, which meant he'd had to learn not to trip over his own feet. He expected competition from Ellie, as she was ruthless when it came to sports, but he had not expected the Davenports. They fought dirty, all elbows, body-slams, and in one case, a knee dangerously close to an area of his body that Chuck quite valued. It made him grateful there were two doctors right on the court.

He caught a blow to the chin from Nate's elbow when the two of them went for the rebound. When they landed, the ball safely tucked against Chuck, he mock-glared at the fourteen-year-old. "I'm so going to kick your ass at Halo later for that."

Nate sneered back with the same good humor. "Like you could," he said, and tried to steal the ball. Chuck whipped off a pass to Gwen, who sank a two-pointer, nothing but net.

"You just got schooled by your mother," Chuck told him as they jogged back up to the top of the half-court to restart.

Nate muttered something uncomplimentary under his breath and raced off to guard the woman who had just effectively schooled him.

Chuck turned and almost tripped over Ellie. "How was your date?" she asked, smirking.

He tried to get around to block her, only for her to slam her shoulder into his sternum. "Ouch!"

"Oh, come on. That didn't hurt."

"Excuse me, it's my chest you just tried to punch a hole through, I think I'm the one that gets to decide if it hurt or not." Chuck tried to get around Ellie again. She blocked his way. He feinted left and jumped, launching into the air and snatching the ball Awesome had stolen from Russ and now hurtled his way. He landed, ducked left, and made a shot around Ellie. It bounced against the rim and Gwen elbowed her husband aside to grab the rebound. Chuck ran to get open, but shaking Ellie proved impossible, both physically and on the subject of the date.

"So?" she asked as Gwen tossed the ball to Awesome. "The date? It was good?"

Chuck thought about it a split-second too long, which made Ellie narrow her eyes. "Yes," he said, speaking quickly to make up for the lapse. "Yeah, it was a great date."

"Oh," Ellie said, and surged forward, grabbing the pass intended for Chuck before he could. She broke away, did a textbook perfect layup, and grinned at him as she snatched the ball. "Where'd you two go?"

"Smithsonian." Chuck caught the ball she tossed to him and dribbled experimentally a couple of times at the top of the court. He faked a pass to Gwen and instead threw the ball to Awesome.

Ellie stayed with him. "The Smithsonian? The air and space museum?"

"Yeah, there."

"Huh." Ellie jumped in front of him, but wasn't fast enough to snatch the pass before Chuck caught it. He backed up, dribbling again and looking for an opening, even while Ellie frowned. "I wouldn't have expected that. And Sarah was fine with it?"

"Fine with it? It was her idea." Chuck did a bounce pass around Ellie that got intercepted by Russ before it could get to Gwen.

"Damn, she must be smitten," Ellie muttered, and Chuck nearly tripped over his own shoelaces. His sister, however, wasn't done. "I didn't hear her come in last night."

Chuck's mind went blank. They hadn't come up with a cover story for Awesome and Ellie, and he didn't want to tell his sister that the date had ended at gunpoint. "It was late. She's really quiet, you know, almost like a mouse, really, and we both had to go in to the CIA for a little bit today, so she was probably just gone before you got up…"

"Uh-huh." Ellie's tone clearly stated that she didn't quite believe him.

Great, Chuck thought as the members of the other team switched and he was now guarding Russ, Ellie thinks I got lucky last night. Sarah's in for a surprise when she wakes up. Won't that be fun?

16 DECEMBER 2007
DAVENPORT ESTATE
16:28 EST


"Yes, sir, I understand."

Chuck looked up from his magazine he'd returned to after the ballgame, though he'd migrated from the dining room to the den. He would have taken it up to his guest room in the attic, but Sarah had an odd sense of propriety with all of these people around, and he figured she might not seek him out in his bedroom. He wanted to make himself available for when she did wake.

The problem was, he was a little underfoot. He hadn't heard Gwen coming, but she padded into the room, cell phone attached to her ear. It sounded like work calling. He rose to leave and give her the room for some privacy, but she waved that he was fine where he was. With a shrug, he returned to the magazine.

"Of course, sir, first thing Monday morning. I'll speak with Agent Scott on Monday and get the problem resolved. Mm-hmm. I understand, sir. Right away. Enjoy the rest of your golf game, sir." Gwen hung the phone up, tossed it on the coffee table, and collapsed with a somewhat melodramatic groan onto the easy chair. "Bureaucratic prick."

Chuck affected an innocent look. "Isn't the FBI full of those?"

"That's bureaucratic idiots, and watch it, buster."

"My bad," Chuck said, smirking at his magazine.

"You're a smartass," Gwen said.

Chuck pretended to look offended. Gwen rolled her eyes and stretched out, kicking her feet up onto the coffee table next to her cell phone. "Kid," she said, as both Gwen and Russ called him that now, "don't even run your own inter-agency department. It's not worth the pain in the ass it causes."

"Noted. Although I do know a thing or two about inter-agency relations."

"Speaking of relations…" Gwen blew out a long breath and smirked again. "How was your date with Agent Walker?"

Chuck dropped the magazine.

"Come on, you think we didn't know?" Again, Gwen rolled her eyes. "I lost twenty dollars betting on you against Russell."

Chuck forced himself to calmly pick up the magazine and opened it to the page he had been reading. "What date?" he asked in an almost-normal voice. "I'm pretty sure the CIA prohibits dating between coworkers in the same department."

"It doesn't prohibit it. It discourages it," Gwen said. When Chuck gave her a startled look, she waved her hand in a "What can you do?" motion. "I run an inter-agency taskforce of representatives that exists outside of the usual chain of command, Chuck. Trust me when I say that I'm a little more than familiar with the separate agency codes of conduct."

"Oh," Chuck said.

"Besides, I wasn't asking as your rep. I think it's cute."

"Cute?"

"Sure. I may have lost twenty dollars and bragging rights, but I'm big enough to admit that. I heard your sister talking about it on the court today. You went to the Smithsonian?"

"Yeah, ah, Sarah had a friend who was willing to let us wander around for awhile after closing." Chuck closed the magazine and set it to the side. "You're not going to put that in your reports?"

"A social outing between friends? I don't see why I would."

Chuck let out a deep breath.

"I'm not out to get you, Chuck. I'm on your side."

"As much as the law will allow you to be," Chuck pointed out before his brain could stop him.

Gwen laughed. "That's why I went to law school, Chuck. Law can be interpreted in so many ways. And it's my job to make sure that, as long as you're a law-abiding citizen, the law stays on your side."

"So you're saying I shouldn't knock over any liquor stores."

"They're more hassle than they're worth," Gwen agreed.

Chuck squinted. "Are you speaking from experience?"

"I have friends that are public defenders."

"Oh."

So," Gwen said. "How did the social outing between friends go, anyway?"

16 DECEMBER 2007
DAVENPORT ESTATE
17:02 EST


"Sarah's been sleeping awhile," Ellie said on the way to the fridge. Chuck had returned to the dining room, which, as dinnertime approached, had become a hub of activity. Casey, Sarah, Chuck, and the Davenports would have to fend for themselves since Ellie and Awesome were headed into DC for a night on the town with two vetted agents following them around at a discrete distance. Even without his issues with people and space, Chuck would have preferred to stay home.

"Okay," Chuck said without looking up from his laptop screen.

Ellie grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. "If you let her sleep any longer, she won't sleep tonight."

Chuck mock-scowled at his sister. "Do you boss everybody around or were we just born special?"

Ellie stuck her tongue out at him.

"Guess I'll go wake her up. Enjoy your date with Awesome."

"Devon," Ellie corrected.

Chuck stuck his tongue out at her right back, closed the lid to his laptop, and headed through the sliding glass door. Very quickly, he regretted not grabbing his jacket for even the short trip across the lawn. He might have tolerated the cold during the game earlier, but with full dark approaching, he shivered. It didn't help that he paused at the door of the guest house for nearly a full minute before going inside. No matter how much he was dying to know what Sarah wanted to talk about, the words "We need to talk" were never comforting words to hear from any woman, at all.

He had no idea where Sarah's room was, as he hadn't explored beyond the kitchen/dining room/living room. They hadn't spent much time in the guest house. He'd gone swimming in the pool once and Ellie had cooked dinner for the Prometheus team one night, but Chuck hadn't even thought to wonder where Sarah's bedroom was, or what it looked like.

And to be honest with himself, in the fantasies that had become more and more prevalent over the past couple of weeks, they hadn't exactly been in bed. His libido didn't appear to be as traditional as the rest of him.

He needn't have worried. Sarah was asleep on the couch in the living room right beyond the front door, stretched out under a blanket and dead to the world. She didn't even stir when Chuck let the door close a little too loudly behind him in his surprise. She lay on her back, her head turned toward him. She always looked so different in sleep. Something, Chuck figured, to do with her eyes. They tended to dominate her face, unsurprising given just how much emotion she could portray with a single look. With her eyes closed, her face relaxed, one hand lightly fisted around the edge of the blanket, she looked younger. Not necessarily vulnerable, but maybe more approachable, even if the reserve never faded.

Also, tired. Even in sleep, she looked exhausted. Perhaps he should let her sleep, Ellie's advice be damned. But Ellie had a point, and he was going nuts from wondering exactly what Sarah wanted to talk about, so he leaned over and touched her shoulder to—

Sarah flared to life. In the blink of an eye, she went from lying down to a blur of motion. Chuck didn't have time to yelp before Sarah's hand clamped down on his wrist and twisted. He went forward, his face smashing into back of the couch. Sarah pinioned his arm behind his back, her knee digging into the small of his back.

"Uncle! Uncle!" His words were muffled by the couch.

Because she was on top of him, he felt Sarah's jolt of surprise. She released his arm and wrist as if he'd scorched her. "Oh, my God! Sorry! Sorry—I am so, so—are you okay?"

With some difficulty, Chuck levered himself up. She'd put him in an arm lock that was as scary as it was impressive, and even more painful than that. "The couch," he said conversationally, "was trying to eat you. But that's okay. I stopped it with my face."

Sarah looked like she might have actually preferred the couch swallow her whole. "I am so, so sorry about that. I didn't—I wouldn't—I mean, it was a reflex and I don't know my own strength and—"

Chuck held up a hand. His shoulder was practically on fire and he realized that he was still perched on one knee on the couch, Sarah very close behind him. Abruptly, he shifted so that he was sitting. "It's okay," he said, hiding his wince. "My fault. There are downsides to dating a ninja."

"Dating a…" The situation seemed to catch up to Sarah. She blinked at him. "What are you doing here?'

"Figured if I let you sleep any longer, you wouldn't sleep tonight."

Sarah pushed a hand through her hair. It was a bit mussed from sleep. "What time is it?"

Chuck showed her his watch.

"Oh." Sarah's brows knit together as she stared at the watch face. She gingerly took a seat next to Chuck on the couch. Chuck figured the adrenaline rush must have made him blind because he only just now noticed Sarah was once again wearing very short shorts. He pried his eyes away. "Wow. I didn't mean to sleep that long."

Chuck picked up her pillow with one hand. It smelled like her shampoo. He put it down very quickly. "Why're you on the couch and not in your room?"

Sarah yawned. "What room?"

"What r—do you mean you've been sleeping on the couch this whole time we've been in DC?"

"It's a comfortable couch."

Chuck gaped at her. "Why didn't you say anything? I would have given up my room in a heartbeat, there's no reason for you to be sleeping on the couch!"

"Oh, yes," Sarah said, only mildly sarcastic, "let's leave the three agents unable to protect themselves together away from the main house. Seriously, Chuck, it's okay."

"Why doesn't Casey take the couch?"

"Because Ellie's more comfortable around me."

"Oh."

Sarah's eyes took on a wicked gleam of fun that mixed in with the sleepiness still on her face and made it a little hard to breathe. "And if I were sleeping in the main house near you, I have no idea what would stop me from just sneaking down the hall some night and…"

She let the sentence trail off. Chuck felt his ears burning, which only made her laugh.

"Which is," Sarah said once she'd stopped chuckling, "why you're here, I suppose."

Chuck gave Sarah a baffled look. "For sex?"

This time it was her turn to choke.

"I mean, I came here to see if you were up to talking, and geez, that makes it sound like we're going to play cops and robbers and—" Chuck stopped mid-sentence when he saw Sarah fighting back a laugh. "That's a roleplay, isn't it? Cops and robbers. And oh God, our conversations have now officially become like walking through a field of sexual landmines."

"To be fair, I don't think that's exactly new," Sarah pointed out. "And it's something we need to talk about, yes."

"Do you want a beer? I want a beer."

Sarah grinned when Chuck pushed himself away from the couch. "Does having a conversation with me require alcohol?" she called.

Chuck bit back a reply that it had more to do with the length of her shorts and the fact that she was sleep-rumpled. "Regular or light beer?" he called back, eying the selection in the fridge.

"Light. Dinner last night was a little heavy on the carbs." Sarah rose and stretched, and Chuck forgot all about his mission to fetch libations. A couple of seconds later, he jumped and focused his attention on the fridge again. He pulled out the beers and, seeing a block of cheese next to the butter, changed his mind and grabbed those, too. He began rifling for pans as Sarah wandered into the kitchen. "What'cha doing?"

"Making grilled cheese," Chuck said.

One of Sarah's eyebrows went up. "Because?"

"It's dinner time."

"You're going to cook?"

Chuck pulled out a bottle opener, popped the tops of the beers, and slid one to Sarah. "Why not? Grilled cheese isn't hard, and it's easy to peel the burned parts off."

"Oh. Well, thanks."

"Want anything on your sandwich besides cheese?"

"I think I saw some tomatoes in here," Sarah said, crossing to the fridge. She pulled one out, then began to rummage for a cutting board and a knife.

Chuck watched her for a moment. He prided himself that he didn't stare at her legs. Mostly. "I don't know how I feel about this whole 'making grilled cheese healthier' thing you're doing."

"It'll be delicious, I promise."

"Okay."

"So we need to talk." Sarah made the first slice in the tomato rather expertly, and Chuck didn't miss the deep breath she took. "Do you want to keep going?"

Chuck blinked at her. "Making the grilled cheese?"

"No. I mean dating me."

Now Chuck did more than blink at her. He outright gaped. "You're joking, right? Of course I want to!"

Sarah looked a bit pink. "Okay, that's good."

"Why? Don't you?"

"Yes, I do." Sarah kept her gaze focused on the tomato. "But it does mean problems. We can't let Gwen know."

"Um, what if she already does?"

"What?"

"She asked me how our date went. For the record, I tried to pretend like I didn't know what she was talking about." Chuck turned on the burner. "And also for the record, it's not prohibited in the CIA to date your coworker. Just discouraged."

"Oh." Sarah's mouth worked a couple of times.

"She's on our side. She's not going to tell Graham and Beckman."

"You're sure?"

"Not as sure as I am that dividing by zero is a bad thing, but reasonably so." Chuck began to slice the cheese, concentrating so that he didn't chop off the tip of his thumb. "Which, I'm guessing, not telling Graham and Beckman is one of the things you want to talk about."

Sarah confirmed his theory by wincing. "It would be bad."

Chuck stopped slicing. "Bad enough to lose your career over bad?"

"Not quite that bad, no. But I would get a nice black mark added to my file."

Chuck frowned. He really didn't like the sound of that. "And you still want to do this?"

"You're important enough to risk a black mark on my file for any day."

"You really do say the sweetest things."

Sarah flicked a bit of tomato at him. Chuck grinned. "The bosses control everything else I do," he said as he stacked bread on the counter, his face sobering. "They don't need to know my—our love life, too. I'm okay with that. But what about Casey?"

"We could buy him a box of Cubans?"

"Really? You're going to bribe an officer of the United States Marine Corps? Shame, Sarah Walker, shame." Chuck paused. "How big of a box are we talking here?"

"He might see us kissing one day," Sarah said.

Chuck hoped his flush wasn't too obvious. "Check to see if Costco sells Cuban cigars in bulk, got it."

"Apparently he might see us kissing a lot?"

Chuck held up a hand. "For the record, I would not protest that."

"Casey might."

"What's he whining about? He's got Cubans."

"Bold words for the man who was having a hard time looking at my legs just a few minutes ago."

Chuck flinched. "You noticed?"

"I notice everything you do."

Chuck's eyes cut up from the sandwich. Surely, he had misheard that. But Sarah was just watching him calmly. "Oh," Chuck said. He hid a wince. "You haven't caught me picking my nose or anything have you?"

Sarah smiled, but she sobered quickly. "I think we need to take things slowly," she said. "Jokes about Cubans and my legs aside…I really want this to work."

"Yeah?" Chuck forced himself to ignore the nerves currently making his stomach twitch. "What happened to 'Just say the word, Chuck?'"

Sarah rolled her eyes. "Of course, the one time I wasn't remotely serious you would pick up on things. Your timing, as ever, is exquisite."

"It really is, isn't it?" Chuck poked the sandwich, not sure if he wanted to laugh or frown at that.

"I really like you, Chuck." When he opened his mouth to ask her why for what felt like the twelfth time, she held up a finger. "You may not understand it, but maybe you should accept it. It would make things easier."

"Women are confusing," Chuck told her.

"It's our prerogative."

Chuck checked the bottom of the sandwich. The outer layer was golden with melted butter, not yet brown. And even better, not yet black. "I like you, too," he said. "It would be nice if this worked."

Sarah's smile, the one that outshone any other lights in the room, nearly dazzled him. "A ringing endorsement," she teased. "So, we'll take it slow?"

"I don't think you have much of a choice with me. My brain periodically needs a reboot after you smile at me—kind of like you're doing right now. I can't even imagine what'll happen if we add…other things to the mix."

Sarah made what looked like a brave attempt to hide her smile behind her hand. "We'll build up to that," she promised.

"And you're okay with doing that? With, ah, waiting for me to catch up?"

"Chuck, it's not a race."

Chuck, about to flip the sandwich over, stilled. "You've told me that before," he said.

He saw Sarah frown as she puzzled it over. "Have I?"

"Back in the bunker, when you were leaving. You followed it up with something about stopping to enjoy the journey." The words had stuck with him over the following two years, every time he had wondered what Bryce and Sarah were up to. He hadn't thought about the advice since the bunker, though. Possibly because he hadn't had time to stop and enjoy any journey.

Sarah took a sip of her beer. "Apparently, I gave good advice back then."

"You still do," Chuck said. He picked up his beer. "To enjoying the journey together?"

Sarah clinked her bottle against his. "You're burning the sandwich," she told him.

Chuck swore and hastily flipped the grilled cheese in the pan. The edges looked a bit crispy. "I'll, ah, take this one and you can have the one I don't burn."

"It's fine," Sarah said. She rose and moved around Chuck, her shoulder brushing his back—was that intentional?—on her way to the cabinet, where she took down a box of Wheat Thins and a bowl. As she poured, she said, "There's something else."

"Bryce."

"Yes." He heard her take a deep breath. "We need to talk about him."

"The one hundred seventy five pound gorilla in the room," Chuck said. "Not that I'm calling Bryce a monkey, but…"

"I get it." Sarah set the bowl of Wheat Thins on the top of the island between her and Chuck and took her seat at the stool. "Bryce and I…it was complicated."

"Oh, there's a fun word," Chuck said, feeling his stomach twist. He had always hated that phrase: it explained nothing and everything at the same time, and usually left everybody more confused. Even though he was dying of curiosity, he coughed a little. He had to at least make the effort to be fair. "It's not any of my business if…"

"No," Sarah said, and took a deep breath. "No, you'll drive yourself crazy over this Bryce thing and you deserve to know."

Chuck wondered if it would be off-putting to chug the rest of his beer. He decided maybe it was a bad idea.

"Bryce and I, we were together. For a little while." Sarah couldn't seem to look at him now. She rolled her beer bottle around on its edges, guiding it along with her thumbs. "It ended almost two years ago, and for a while, it was kind of a disaster. Bryce went on to work solo, I got loaned to the DEA and worked with Carina. It wasn't serious, but…"

"But it happened?" Chuck asked.

"Yes. And I can't take it back that it happened. I know he's a friend of yours, and so this is probably a little weird."

"Sarah, the guy blew up half of the DNI and made me a human Intersect. Then he let us think he was rogue for over a month. A little weird doesn't begin to cover it."

He could feel Sarah's eyes on him, watching him closely. "That is true," was all she said.

Chuck put all of his attention into flipping the sandwich onto a plate. Twin feelings of elation and dread filled him as he added more butter and started the second sandwich. Though he wanted to cheer that it hadn't been serious between Bryce and Sarah, the rest of him didn't like hearing about it. It was selfish on his part, he knew, and foolish. Bryce had dated some pretty amazing women at Stanford, a relationship between him and Sarah made a lot of sense. It made a hell of a lot more sense than Sarah wanting to be with him, Chuck Bartowski.

"If it's not weird for you to work with Bryce, I'll try not to let it be weird for me," he said, and hoped it wasn't a lie.

Sarah let out a relieved breath. "Good. I don't want to come between your friendship."

"I think all of the aforementioned blowing things up already did that. But I do have to wonder: if it was kind of a disaster with Bryce," he said, "what do you think working together after this thing goes south will be like?"

Sarah shrugged. "I don't know."

He could appreciate the honesty, even though it did nothing to ease the knots in his stomach. "That's it?" he asked.

"Let's not let it go south," Sarah said.

"And we can prevent that, how?"

"You know, I enjoy being the optimist in the relationship," Sarah said. "It's a switch. Plus, it means I can do things like this." She rose and crossed around to Chuck's side of the island, while he watched her. He stayed stock still as she rose up on her toes and kissed his cheek.

"That's it?" he asked again, raising an eyebrow at Sarah.

One of her eyebrows rose. "Didn't we just say we needed to go slow?"

"Yeah, but you could take pity on me." Chuck put his hand on his shoulder and mock-grimaced. "A ninja tried to dislocate my shoulder today."

"Well, since your face did save me from a ravenous couch…" This time, when Sarah stood on her tiptoes, she didn't kiss his cheek. And unlike the night before, Chuck kissed her back.

"So," he asked when she broke the kiss and his brain had caught up with the rest of him. "What do we do now?"

"You finish the burning that sandwich and we go watch TV. And if you're nice to me, I'll let you put your arm around me." Sarah grabbed the first sandwich, the bowl of Wheat Thins, and her beer, and headed toward the living room.

18 DECEMBER 2007
THE DAVE CAVE
09:23 EST


"Well, well, well, look who finally rears his ugly head. I realize you've got a hot handler-slash-partner, Agent Bartowski, but you do know the Monday morning walk of shame still means coming in on time." Digital Dave swung around in his chair to grin at Chuck.

Chuck grinned just as sarcastically back and dropped a bag with two Danishes down beside his coworker. "I was in a meeting, jerk."

"Ah. Meetings. The number one killer of productivity in the CIA, apart from Democrats."

"Does that mean you're Republican, Dave?" Chuck set his messenger bag down by his chair and began booting up his computers.

"Me? Hell no. But you've got to admit, Republicans sure are fond of shooting things, which means they automatically support the CIA, right?"

Chuck thought of Casey. "I wouldn't say that's always the case."

Dave pulled out the first Danish. "Cherry! Sweet!"

Chuck had to laugh even as he swung around to make sure all of his hard drives were on. The briefing with Beckman and Graham had included the entire Prometheus team, even Ellie and Awesome, which had been an interesting dynamic. Permanent cover and NSA identities had been issued for both of them for use in any reports. Chuck figured Ellie wasn't sure how she felt about the name Adele Beckett, but Awesome of course loved the name Bryan McGee. Chuck had a feeling that Awesome would have loved any name picked out for him, though.

The briefing had also included Bryce. Even after his talk with Sarah, Chuck had been uneasy about how things stood with Bryce, but worry had been pointless. The other CIA agent had been all business and congeniality during the briefing. He'd been polite to Ellie, excited to meet Awesome, and professional with Chuck, Sarah, and Casey. Chuck supposed it was only to be expected.

"You get any of that code looked at this weekend?" Dave asked through a mouthful of Danish.
Chuck swiveled around in his chair. "Ah…"

"I'm going to take that as a no."

"Well, yeah. It's a no."

"It's okay." Dave glanced through the large window that overlooked the tech lab, where Sarah could be seen chatting with one of the techs she had befriended—possibly out of boredom—over the past couple of weeks. "I understand."

Chuck forced a laugh. "I didn't spend all weekend with Sarah, you know."

"Every time you say something like that, you prove my theory that you're completely insane right. You know that, don't you?"

"Shut up." Chuck laughed and turned back to his desk, logging onto the server so that he could check his email. "I played video games."

"Video games."

"And watched TV."

"I don't understand."

"TV is this thing where you take real live actors, or cartoons, if you prefer, and they tell a story on a box usually in your living room that's not a computer and—"

Dave crumpled up the Danish bag and threw it at him. Chuck deflected the paper missile with a fist and laughed.

"You, my friend, are lucky you're so good at your job, otherwise I would have to take offense to your condescending and totally wrong explanations." Dave stabbed an accusing finger at him, though he was grinning. "And good thing one of us here did because guess who finished out the Fulcruminator code?"

Chuck abruptly stopped idly moving his chair from left to right. "You did?" he asked. "For reals?"

"For reals."

"Let me see!" In a flash, Chuck was across the lab, reading over Dave's shoulder. He practically devoured the code with his eyes, his brain both marveling and searching for any errors. After a moment, he leaned back and let out a low whistle. "That's beautiful. I don't think I've seen anything more beautiful than that."

"It is probably the sexiest piece of code I've ever written," Dave agreed. "I tested it every way I could think of, and good news, Bartowski, this baby's ready to go."

"Yeah?"

Dave picked up a wallet from amid the carnage atop his desk. "Put it into every type of swipe card the CIA can produce, as well as this," and he held up a flash drive, "and this." He added a simple DVD-R to the pile. "She's field ready."

Chuck felt a spurt of pure inventor's glee. "Should we—should we pop some champagne or something?" he asked.

"I think Damon keeps a bottle of the cheap stuff in the—hold on a second." Dave picked up his buzzing cell phone. "O'Connor."

Dave's last name was O'Connor?

"Got it, sir. Of course. No, not a problem, the device is ready for use." After making a couple of "mm-hmm" noises, Dave hung up the phone and raised his eyebrows at Chuck. "Want to see something neat about the Dave Cave?"

Did it come with an ability to magically clean itself, Chuck wondered. But he just said, "Sure."

"Wave to all of the techs now, they're about to not see us."

That didn't sound good to Chuck. He eyed Dave warily. "Excuse me?"

Dave flipped up a pile of cables. Chuck had thought they were just lying on the desk, part of the regular mess, but they turned out to be the lid for a panel containing some ominous-looking red buttons. As Chuck's eyebrows rose, Dave pressed two of the buttons in quick order, waited a second, and then tapped a third.

The glass on the window overlooking the tech department changed subtly. It was as though the lighting in the room altered its color.

"Nifty, right? Instant two-way mirror." Dave put the panel back, seemingly careful not to disrupt any of the dust buildup around it, and crossed to the other side of the room. "When I first started here, I was a little disappointed. I mean, working at the CIA and there wasn't any of that secrecy stuff? Where's all the cloak, and where the hell is the dagger?"

Chuck, who had perhaps seen more than enough dagger to last him a lifetime and not enough cloak, just said, "Uh-huh."

"And then when I got promoted, they showed me this." Dave moved aside what had appeared to Chuck to be a towering monolith of ancient, dusty computers. And there, Chuck saw, plain as day, sitting in the middle of the floor was a trapdoor.

He got a brief flash of killer robo-rabbits coming after him when he blinked, but he managed to hold it together.

"Cool, right?" Dave asked. "It's how they smuggle in the deep undercover agents. You know, when they visit Langley and need tech upgrades or something."

Chuck wanted to ask how many actual deep undercover agents visited Langley, as that seemed rather counterproductive to him, but the trapdoor opened before he could. Bryce Larkin climbed through, looking casual in the blue sweater and slacks he'd worn to the briefing that morning. "Dave, hey!" he said, giving the other man a firm handshake. "Been awhile."

Dave returned the handshake. "God, am I glad you weren't actually rogue, I would never have lived it down. You were on one of my teams. I'm still getting crap for it in the break room."

"Yeah, sorry about that, man." Bryce turned the megawatt grin toward Chuck. "You've been assimilated?"

"For a couple of weeks now." And what the hell reason did he have to be nervous around Bryce? Sarah had said the relationship with Bryce hadn't been serious. Chuck kept his stance relaxed so that Bryce couldn't read his body language. "Dave's trying to make it permanent."

"We're understaffed, and you're a rock-star," Dave said, rehashing an old argument. "Just say the word and I will sign any and every contract I can in blood to get you stationed here."

Chuck jolted. Neither Bryce nor Dave seemed to notice.

"I believe it," Bryce said, grinning over at his one-time best friend. He abruptly shifted his stance; it was time to get down to business. "The bosses sent me over here to pick up some gear that will help on my mission?"

"Ah yes. No thanks to Agent Slacker over here." Dave jerked his thumb at Chuck.

"Oh, right, because I didn't detect and break the original code at all," he said, sarcasm dripping. He forgot some of the awkwardness around Bryce in his excitement. "Seriously, come check this out. We hacked the primary Fulcrum security algorithm. The coding is a thing of genius."

"Genius," Dave echoed, letting Chuck lead them over to the monitor. He pulled up the code and stepped back to let Bryce get a look at it.

Instead of geeking out, as he would have in college, Bryce just stood with his hands in his pockets. "I'm so out of touch with that stuff, man. I don't know if I'd be properly impressed because I've forgotten so much about it, but I'm sure it's great."

Chuck tried to hide his disappointment. Things might have been strained with Bryce around now, but one of his favorite parts about Stanford had been showing Bryce coding and bouncing ideas off of him.

Thankfully, Dave took over the show. "Okay. Well, even so, it's an impressive bit of work. Here, this is for you."

Bryce unzipped the wallet. "Scan cards, nice! What are they for?"

"Any and every type of security scanner Fulcrum can throw at us, minus optical and fingerprint, and I'm sure you can work your way around that." Dave began assembling random things on the desk. "Just give me a second to get the software side of things together for you, and you'll be all set."

"Cool. Thanks, Dave."

"No problem."

While Dave puttered around, gathering random objects from around his worktable, Chuck headed to his desk. He was surprised when Bryce followed him, as the other man hadn't seemed particularly interested in striking up a conversation with him at the meeting. "You having a good time in DC?" Bryce asked, leaning against Chuck's desk almost exactly like Sarah always did.

They were going to chitchat now? Chuck nearly raised an eyebrow at that. "Yeah, I guess," he said. "It's not my town, but it's not bad."

"Excellent."

Now what, Chuck wanted to ask him? There were questions: why did Bryce trust him and nobody else in the agencies? What had changed his mind? Why had he come back now, or more specifically, why had he followed Chuck and Sarah around on their date? And most importantly, with everything that had happened since September between them, why the hell were they now two seconds away from talking about the weather?

"Got a present for you," Bryce went on.

To his credit, Chuck didn't point out that the last time Bryce had given him anything, Chuck had spent a sleepless week on the run across Russia, Eastern Europe, and Greece from both terrorists and good guys alike. He swung around in his desk chair and asked, "Oh yeah?"

"Beckman asked me to drop this off. Said you requested it." Bryce dropped a thick manila folder on Chuck's desk.

Though he was now brimming with curiosity, Chuck didn't move to grab the file. "Why'd you take the disk?" he asked.

"What?"

"At Stanford. You took the disk and brought back what I presume is an altered version of the original. We didn't get a chance to ask Fleming about it before he passed." Chuck didn't think about that—couldn't think about that. He would forever hate Fleming for being a part of what had led to Chuck spending five years in a bunker, and it felt wrong to loathe a dead man. "So I'm going to guess, in the nature of true spy work, it's ninety percent truth and ten percent lie. Why did you remove my profile and yours from that disk, Bryce?"

Bryce shrugged. His face never flickered or changed or gave away any other signs of lying. He continued to look completely genial. "I didn't want the Agency having that profile."

"Didn't they have it already?"

"No. Fleming keeps—kept those interviews for his own records." Bryce glanced around the Dave Cave, and Chuck got the feeling he was seeing something else besides a messy computer lab. "The less these people have on you, the better you are in the long run."

"Why'd you take my profile off, too?"

"I was doing you a favor, buddy."

Chuck's mouth acted before the rest of him. "I would appreciate it if you stopped doing me favors."

Now Bryce's face wavered, a quick grimace, but he said, "That's fair. Okay. Sorry."

It was as much of an apology as he was going to get. Silence fell over them, so awkward and stiff that Chuck nearly just turned to his computer and started typing, anything to break the tension. He cast about for a subject that they could discuss in front of Dave. The other man might have suppressed the fact that Bryce had emailed Chuck on the night the Intersect had been destroyed, but he had been adamant ever since that he wanted nothing to do with whatever had been in the email.

"So, uh, how's your sister?" Chuck finally asked.

"Dunno. I cut all ties in September."

When he'd blown up the Intersect, Chuck thought. He paused as the implications truly settled in. Bryce had sabotaged his career, betrayed his partner, estranged his best friend, cut ties with his friends and family. He had not only blown up the Intersect, it was like he'd blown up his whole life, too. In that moment, Chuck saw Bryce for what he must be: lonely.

"Oh," he said. "Right."

"How are things with you?" Bryce asked, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

"They're okay," Chuck said, not really sure what Bryce wanted him to say.

"Casey treating you all right?"

Chuck thought of the three-hour Modern Warfare marathon he had had with Casey and Nate Davenport the day before. "He hasn't threatened to shove his foot up my ass this week."

"Always a good thing."

Dave appeared, and Chuck nearly let out a long breath in relief. "Your computer and software kit, sir," Dave said, handing a nondescript laptop bag to Bryce. "That should contain everything you need."

"Thanks, Dave. Really." Bryce shook the computer tech's hand. "Guess I'd better go and let you get out of stealth mode."

"Much appreciated." Dave glanced at Chuck and headed back to his own side of the Cave.

"Well, this is my cue," Bryce said.

Chuck rose to his feet and held out his hand. "Try to stay out of trouble?"

"And ignore what I'm best at? Ha. Take care of yourself, Chuck."

Bryce shook his hand, but thankfully didn't resort to the Klingon. It would have been pointless; Dave understood Klingon better than either of them. Bryce crossed back to the trapdoor. Before he climbed through, though, he cast one look over his shoulder, past Chuck to the window overlooking the entire Den beyond the Cave. Chuck saw a fleeting look cross Bryce's face, and then the man dropped into the trapdoor, vanishing from sight. It took Chuck a moment to realize what the look had been: regret.

He glanced over his shoulder to see what Bryce had been looking at, though some part of him already knew. Indeed, Sarah stood at the coffeemaker outside, topping off her mug.

He didn't get to assess how he felt about that, though, for the instant Dave hit the buttons to bring the Cave out of stealth mode, the door opened to admit Casey. "Pack your bags, Bartowski. Bosses have cleared us to go back to L.A."

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