“Hey, Morgan, can I talk to you real quick?”
“Yeah, Chuck, what’s goin’ on?”
“Listen. You and Anna… you really, um, need to stop your ‘funtime activities’ in the break room.”
“Aw, come on, Chuck!”
“Morgan, there are certain things that normal, decent people should never have to see, and that, really, is one of them.”
“Like you’re one to talk. I seem to recall I walked in on you and Sarah gettin' freaky.”
“WE WERE IN MY BEDROOM!”
“You say tomato, I say tomahto,” Morgan replied flippantly, unaware that John Casey had walked up behind him.
Morgan yelped as Casey grabbed him by the scruff of the neck.
“How about this, Grimes,” Casey hissed in his ear. “If I ever walk in on you and Anna in the break room again, I will take pictures and post them all over the shopping plaza. Your shame will then be complete.”
Morgan gave Casey a dirty look and walked away. Chuck looked at Casey and shook his head.
“You really are warped on the inside, Casey.”
“Yeah, well, comes with the job,” he replied. “Oh, and by the way, can you and Walker do me a favor? If you’re gonna have some ‘funtime activities’ of your own, could you two warn me so that I can turn off the surveillance equipment? It’s getting a little old to put on the headphones and hear the two of you…”
He stopped and literally shuddered.
Chuck just looked at him. “I thought you never turned that off.”
“Yeah, well, shouldn’t have to be off for more than one or two minutes, right?” Casey said with a rather mean-looking grin.
Chuck shot Casey the evil eye and then gave him the finger. Casey laughed and walked off.
Unbeknownst to Chuck, Anna had entered the Nerd Herd desk and had overheard the last portion of the conversation. “Aw, Chuck, are you a minuteman?” she asked, with concern in her voice.
Chuck’s head whipped around. “What?!”
“Chuck, if you’re having issues with longevity, you really ought to talk to Morgan. He can go for quite a while.”
“Alright then,” Chuck said matter-of-factly. “I think I’m going to go be sick now.”
Chuck’s real problem was actually of a much more tame nature. He had been trying – completely unsuccessfully – for the last two months to find out Sarah’s birthday. She wouldn’t tell him. Graham wouldn’t tell him. Beckman wouldn’t tell him. Casey didn’t know, and he couldn’t get in touch with Bryce.
One night, while Chuck was up far too late working on, as he called it, his Advanced Intelligence Supercomputer (the AIS for short), his phone rang. He grabbed it – unknown number.
“Hmmm,” he said. Curious, he hit the answer button. “Hello?”
“Chuck!”
“Bryce! Holy shit! I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for like the last month!”
“Well, I’ve been under deep. Like, WAY deep. I had to – are you secure?”
“Should be,” Chuck replied. “NSA had my phone modified a little while back.”
“Alright. I had to penetrate into a Fulcrum cell, get deep inside. I ended up taking it down, but that was some fierce shit.”
Chuck smiled. “Yeah… and meanwhile I’ve been up here in the daylight, building a computer that Morgan is convinced is going to become Skynet.”
Bryce laughed. “Well, watch out for the Governor, then.”
“I hadn’t even considered that,” Chuck replied with a laugh.
Bryce paused for a moment. “So, from what I hear… um, you and Sarah are also an item?”
There was an awkward silence for a moment. Finally, Chuck spoke.
“Yeah… um, a little more than three months now.”
Chuck couldn’t have been more shocked by Bryce’s reply. “Good,” Bryce said. “She deserves better than me. And given that she chose to stay there in Los Angeles with you over coming with me… well, I kind of figured it was inevitable.”
“Well, it did take me getting kidnapped to make it happen,” Chuck replied.
“Yeah, I heard about that, too,” Bryce said. “I kind of gave Director Graham an earful.
“By the way. What are you doing for Sarah’s birthday?”
“I have no idea!” Chuck replied. “That’s why I’ve been trying to get in touch with you. I have no clue when her birthday is!”
Bryce was quiet for a moment. “Shit, dude,” he said softly. “It’s TOMORROW.”
It was three o’clock in the morning. Chuck was quietly freaking out.
He was seated at the kitchen table, Ellie, Devin, and Casey all sitting there with him. “I’m a dead man,” he moaned. “I’m completely screwed!”
“Get a hold of yourself, Bartowski,” Casey replied crankily. “There’s no way she’s expecting anything. She herself wouldn’t tell you when her birthday was.”
“Yeah, but she told me it was because she wanted me to find out on my own, not because she was hiding it from me!”
Casey’s eyebrows went up. “Oh. Then, yeah. You’re screwed.”
“Wait, wait, hold on a second,” Devin interrupted. “She’s supposed to be coming over anyway tomor- tonight, isn’t she?”
“Yeah…”
“So we throw her a surprise party,” he finished. “You know, it’s a Saturday –“
“Also Flag Day,” Casey added.
Devin shot Casey a look of irritation. “Like I was saying, it’s a Saturday, so Buy More will close down early, and we can get the people she knows over here, and we can get… party stuff… and it’ll be fun, right?”
Chuck was starting to breathe a little more normally. “Okay… so surprise party… good…”
Then he panicked again. “But what do I get her?!”
“Calm down, Chuck!” Ellie said. “Get her something simple. Something that says you care about her.”
Chuck rolled his eyes. “So helpful.”
“If you’d let me finish…” Ellie shot back. “Get her something that has a little bit of sentimentality. You know, she grew up Catholi-“
Her eyes went wide and she clapped her hands over her own mouth. “You didn’t hear me say that,” she mumbled through her hands.
“Yes I did,” Chuck replied, the proverbial compact fluorescent lamp going on above his head. “And now I have an idea.”
But then, reality struck. “No,” he whispered. “I spent all my spare money on that goddamn computer!”
“Don’t worry, dude, I’ll spot you,” Devin assured him.
“Devin, I’m thinking jewelry here.”
“Seriously dude, it’s good. My annual gross income is more than you and Major Casey here put together.”
Casey gave him a dirty look, but Chuck was too grateful to register the sideways insult. “Thanks, Devin,” he breathed. “You’re awesome.”
“Dude. I know.”
By 9:30, when Devin and Chuck left, Ellie had been up and on the phone, trying to get things arranged. And now, just before 10:00, the two men were waiting patiently outside Ben Bridge Jewelers at the Glendale Galleria, waiting for it to open.
Finally, the gates began to scroll upward. Chuck strode rapidly into the store.
“Hello, zir, how may I azzizt you?” called a very short man with an odd European accent.
“I need to get something for my girlfriend,” Chuck replied. “Today’s her birthday.”
“Ah, a caze of having vorgotten one’z girlvriend’z birthday, yez?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Alright, zir, vat did you have in mind?”
“Something simple. Not too ostentatious, but something nice.”
“Ah, perhapz a pendant of zome zort?”
“Yeah… oh, yeah, she had a religious background as a kid, too. Like, she’s not involved with the church now…”
“…but it’z alvayz nize to have a reminder of von’z childhood, yez?”
Chuck nodded.
“Vell, zen, I zink I may have juzt ze right thing,” the man said. Opening a case behind him, he pulled out a long blue box.
He laid it on the counter in front of Chuck, and opened it. “Here ve have a vite gold crozz, on a gold chain, vith an alexandrite – ze birthztone ov June – gem in ze zenter, and a zmall diamond at each tip.”
“That’s quite a piece of jewelry right there,” Devin said.
“Yes, it certainly is,” Chuck replied, “and it’s pretty much perfect. How much?”
“It juzt zo happenz zat it iz on clearanze,” the man purred. “Vor you, one hundred zeventy dollarz.”
‘That’s it?” Chuck said incredulously. He looked over at Devin. “I can actually afford that on my own!”
“Awesome.”
Ellie was waiting in her car at the end of the block. As soon as she saw Sarah’s car round the corner, she started her own up and flew down the street. She parked right next to Sarah.
“Hi Ellie!” Sarah said with a smile as Ellie got out of her car.
“Sarah!” Ellie replied, coming round the end of Sarah’s car to give the other woman a hug.
“So, what do you and Chuck have planned for tonight?” Ellie asked.
“I have no idea,” Sarah said. “He wouldn’t tell me!”
“I’m sure it’ll be great,” Ellie replied, trying very hard not to smile.
The apartment was dark as they approached. “That’s weird,” Sarah mused. “Chuck said he’d be here.”
Ellie didn’t say anything, just unlocked the door and swung it open –
“SURPRISE!”
Sarah’s eyes went wide in shock, and she reflexively reached behind her back for her gun, but she relaxed quickly as soon as she realized what was going on.
She spotted Chuck in the center of the room. Shaking her head and smiling, she approached him.
“Alright, how’d you figure it out?” she asked. “I know Casey doesn’t know, and I also know that Graham and Beckman both refused to tell you.”
“Oh, I heard from a little birdie… a Larkin, if you will.”
“And whose idea was the surprise party?”
“Believe it or not, that was Devin. I was freaking out at about three this morning, and he had this epiphany. Ellie threw it all together – really, they just told me to stay out of the way, get you some sort of gift, and they’d take care of everything else.”
And so they had. There were about a dozen people there – Casey, most of the Nerd Herd, a couple of Ellie and Devin’s friends who had a passing acquaintance with Sarah. The apartment was decorated, there was a rather large cake – “HAPPY 26TH, SARAH!” it boldly proclaimed. At Casey’s insistence, the cake was decorated like an American flag, because it was Flag Day.
“This is fantastic,” Sarah said. “My last birthday, I was in some hell hole in east Asia. This year? I’m in Los Angeles, with friends and the closest thing I’ve had to a family in years.
“Now,” she continued, “what about this gift?”
“It’s in my bedroom,” Chuck replied.
Sarah smiled. “Chuck, I’m sure that particular gift can wait till later.”
Chuck’s eyebrows went up. “Feeling a little naughty, are we, Agent Walker?” he asked. “Seriously, though, your gift actually is in my bedroom.”
Taking her by the hand, he led her back to the bedroom. Closing the door behind him, he handed her the blue box.
Looking at him curiously, she opened the box. Seeing what was in it, her eyes widened a little, and a small gasp escaped her mouth.
She lifted the pendant from the box, watching the hue of the alexandrite change from green to red and back again as it caught different angles of light. “Chuck, this is beautiful,” she breathed. “I haven’t had a cross… in years.”
Chuck didn’t say anything, just took the chain from her hands. He detached the clasp, then brought the two halves together behind her neck, reattaching the clasp. The pendant settled on her chest, just above the v-cut of her shirt.
He left his hands behind her neck, and drew her close to him, kissing her softly. She responded by embracing him, then breaking the kiss off and just letting him hold her for a little while.
“Where’s Bartowski?” Casey wanted to know.
“I think I saw him head this way,” Morgan replied, heading back toward Chuck’s bedroom. Casey followed – but so did Anna.
“You might not want to go in there,” she warned, as Morgan put his hand on the doorknob.
“Oh, right,” he whispered, his eyes widening. But he didn’t go anywhere. Instead, he crouched down by the door, his ear pressed against it, trying to hear what was going on.
“What are you doing, Grimes?!” Casey hissed. But his curiosity got the better of him, and he crept up to the door, pressing his ear against it. Soon enough, Anna had joined them by the door as well.
Then, completely without warning, it opened. Chuck stood there in the doorway, his mouth gaping.
Finally, he spoke.
“You are all sick, sick people.”
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