flowcharts (fic and in-betweens for wordsflow)

world on fire (wicked game to play)

wordsflow — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 16:51:49 GMT

title: world on fire (wicked game to play)
fandom/characters/pairings: Chuck (Chuck/Sarah/Bryce)
summary: They leave no traces behind, no trail to follow.
rating: R
note: Happy birthday, gigglemonster! Fic art and a lengthier birthday wish on Tumblr. :)

One step forward, three steps back. That's how they did it before, and that's how the familiar seeps back in.

Chuck grabs at her hair, she digs her fingernails into his back and she rasps out, don't stop, go.

They fall into a pattern. Never the same names, always running, the weight of the world resting on their shoulders. They get adventurous sometimes, staying in a city far longer than they should and the adrenaline kicks into their systems when they go.

She's never good with words. Never have been, but every night she looks at him with that look in her eyes. She's sorry for pulling him into this life; this life he's not suited for, that she knows he hates, but he's in this with her so deep he can't pull out even if he wants to.

I'm the one who stayed, he tells her.

It doesn't make her feel any better.

--

Bryce - well, Bryce has a second lease of life. He's died so many times that death's just a new beginning each time, but each time he also takes a part of the people he cares about with him.

He's rooted in New York now, with a different name and a different history, but even though everything's changed, there's a constant. He shreds the newspaper ad; no one can know, it's his and her secret to keep.

--

There's a gunfight out of nowhere, and in the aftermath all Sarah remembers is the sheer fear that builds up in her stomach and crawls up her throat. Chuck's laying there, a pool of blood seeping into the granite ground, and her mind goes oh god, oh god, i can't lose you and i can't - oh god; it's all a blur.

She can't even remember what happens next, but somehow the agent in her manages.

You were supposed to protect him, he tells her, his words accusatory but his face soft, concerned and worried. She sets her jaw, willing every ounce left in her to stop that awful replay and the dreadful feeling from building again.

Chuck laughs, but that's a bad idea because he whimpers after, but he's Chuck and he's always looking out for them more than he does himself, so Bryce can't help but slugs him lightly on the shoulder and smiles. Somewhere there are sentences made out of words like sorry, and I had to leave, and I missed you, and I'm so glad you're alive.

Chuck hears the unspoken words, too.

--

They have to run again, when he gets better.

She looks at both of them, a tiny smile on her face as she holds up the key card; swiping down and now Bryce's a free man too.

They leave no traces behind, no trail to follow.

--

They fall into a pattern. Always together, systematically; they run.

Chuck grabs at her hair, she digs her fingernails into his back; Bryce slides his hand onto her thigh, and she lets out a long shuddering sigh.

After, she takes a moment to remember which faceless city they're in. She still looks at him with that guilt running wild in her, but she's not alone in this; the least of what she knows.

You were never meant for this life, Bryce says, and she, master of words, nods silently.

Chuck smiles that lopsided smile of his, the one that both of them know is theirs. I'm the one who's staying.

They can't argue with that logic.

--

One step forward.

They don't look back.

so many foreign worlds (so ready for us)

wordsflow — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 03:38:19 GMT

title: so many foreign worlds (so ready for us)
fandom/characters/pairings: The Big Bang Theory (Sheldon/Penny)
summary: She purses her lips together. “You can’t stay here. You don’t belong here.”
rating: K+
note: Written for the first fiction round of Paradox-o-rama. (Original posting over at the challenge post) Unbetaed, all mistakes are mine, et cetera! Title from Bon Iver's Creature Fear. ALSO. This is a TBBT/Fringe fusion, don't ask me how that happened.

So, she’s a freak. Not even in the hypothetical sense of the word - she means it quite literally. Fire starting, dreams invading, universes hopping kind of freaky. The FBI agent who approached her told her something about a drug trial when she was a kid, about being tested on and she has very vague memories of it, but nothing that holds together and somehow, that makes sense. Maybe too much sense. Maybe even more sense than her and Leonard, in the HerAndLeonard way.

Still. Anyway.

It isn’t something she tells her friends. Not the scientists living across the hall from her, and certainly not her other friends. For one, she can already imagine Sheldon’s “That’s absurd” face, and two, she’s not sure how to explain it anyway. So it’s a secret she keeps to herself, at least until the dreams came.

In her dreams, she sees two of everything. Two apartment blocks, two theaters, two moms, two Penny’s.

There’s only one Sheldon.

--

It turns out that the Penny of the other world is a pretty big movie star. The first thing she notices when she arrives, besides the double-deck cars and the big trucks, is her face up on the billboard for a movie. Except she has short, brown hair, and that nose definitely looks surgically altered. Regardless, Penny’s here on a mission, one that the Directorate of National Intelligence sent her on, because somehow she’s roped into doing that now. There’s a lot of classified and top secret and you can’t tell anybody thrown about, but she’s supposed to go to the Caltech of this world and get something. They tell her she’ll know it when she sees it, so yeah, thanks for being helpful.

She strides into Caltech, hoping that nobody notices her and she’ll able to see whatever she’s supposed to see.

Instead, she runs into Leonard. Leonard, who’s wearing a smart suit and no glasses and his hair isn’t that silly flop that she’s used to seeing. When he speaks, he’s not nervous like the Leonard back home was, when they’d first met.

She decides it’s a good idea not to just stare at him, so she sticks her hand out awkwardly. “Hi! Dr. Hofstader, right?”

He nods, looks at her with squinty, quizzical eyes. “Are you lost?”

“I think so. Maybe. Um, I’m supposed to…” She searches her mind for a good excuse; in her haste she forgets a crucial detail. “To get something from Dr. Cooper! Yeah, that’s it.”

“Dr. who, now?”

She laughs nervously. “No, not Doctor Who, that’s a television show,” because of course she remembers that, and besides, David Tennant is cute and so is that new one she’s only seen snatches of, since she doesn’t drop by their apartment so often these days.

Other!Leonard’s eyes light up in excitement.

“Doctor Who ended 21 years ago! Are you a fan, Ms…?”

“Just call me Penny,” she tells him, almost automatically. “There isn’t a Dr. Sheldon Cooper at Caltech? He’s a physicist? A really good one?”

“I’m sorry, I’ve never met or heard of anyone with that name before, Penny.”

Her mind connects with her dreams. Her heart sinks.

--

She returns home, makes sure she stops by 4A to see that Leonard still has that floppy hair and geek glasses, that Sheldon’s still there. (He does, and he is.) When she sleeps, her mind works out the answers for her. Which kind of freaks her out, obviously, but it all clicks. She pores through readings even though she hates doing that, and she finds actual files that states that Sheldon, as a young boy, was sick most of the time. There’s a lull in his life, medically speaking, before it starts back up with check-ups but nothing as severe as his childhood illnesses had been.

She calls his mother (she still has her number, tucked away in a safe place in her apartment) and finds out that at age fifteen, when Sheldon was a visiting professor in Germany, he’d almost died.

She finds so many more things, but her progress gets interrupted when Leonard knocks on her door frantically, saying that Sheldon’s mother has arrived to take him home, but Mary Cooper doesn’t seem like herself.

Penny knows what’s happening, in an instance.

--

Finally, weeks after he disappeared to the other side with his mother, she finds him. His real mother, it turns out, is a scientist in this world as well; his real father is the one who prayed when their Shelly disappeared all those years ago.

She stands in front of him, her eyes pleading.

“Penny,” he says, somehow managing to sound both patient and impatient. “I’m a scientist. I’m merely righting a wrong by keeping the universes balanced with staying.”

She purses her lips together. “You can’t stay here. You don’t belong here.”

“I don’t believe that’s a valid reasoning for my staying here, as I was, to put it in your terms, yanked out of this world into yours. I belong in this world just as much as anyone here at this very moment, besides you, of course.”

“What about - your friends? Your mom? Memaw? Your entire family?” Her voice cracks a little. “Everybody else?” Because of course she’s everybody else, even if she doesn’t know exactly what he thinks of her, or if he gets that heart pounding thing, that awkward but not unpleasant feeling he makes her feel, or if he misses her, despite her best efforts, while he's here the same way she does back home. She’s not sure he even thinks of her, period.

Sheldon looks down at a fascinating spot on the ground. “The Sheldon Lee Cooper of your world has been dead for fourteen years. I don’t belong there.”

“Yes. Yes, you do. These last few days all I’ve been thinking of are reasons why you should come back. Because you’re going to win the Nobel Prize there, because you can help me - the people I work for, with this whole other universes thing, because you can come up with something that’ll work.” She takes a deep breath, daring him to look her in the eye. She isn’t succeeding by much, but it’s a good effort. “But, Sheldon. You have to come back, because you… you belong with me.”

“That is an absurd proposition, as I’m not an object that you can own,” he says, stiffly; softly.

She finally catches his gaze, something stirring within her, and without thinking, not of alternate worlds or the imminent danger they’re in or that he’s Sheldon or maybe because that he is Sheldon, she kisses him.

--

(He returns with her.

He also brings a copy of The Monkey and the Princess back with him.)

untitled drabble

wordsflow — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 03:32:15 GMT

title: untitled drabble
fandom/characters/pairings: The Big Bang Theory (Sheldon/Penny)
summary: Penny comes to him, 10:14 AM on the third Saturday of June, year 2010.
rating: K+
note: Written for the first fiction round of Paradox-o-rama. (Original posting over at the challenge post) Unbetaed, all mistakes are mine, et cetera!

Penny comes to him, 10:14 AM on the third Saturday of June, year 2010. Her face is ashen, he can see the tear tracks on her cheeks. The puffy bags under her eyes would clearly indicate that she’d spent the past few hours crying (He recalls the phrase ‘sobbing her eyes out’, then scoffs, as one cannot expel one’s eyes out simply by crying).

He pauses. Protocol indicates that he ask what was wrong, and he does so (and with an additional ‘there, there’), fully expecting a tirade from her. He braces himself.

Protocol doesn’t prepare him for when Penny’s eyes fills up with tears (water, mineral salts, antibodies, lysozyme) and heads for the couch, the opposite end (0,2) of his seat (0,0). He closes the door behind him, and sits down on his spot.

He can’t read minds. (He wishes he can, not for the first time.)

She is still a blubbering mess, so he waits patiently. 3 minutes and 47 seconds, and she finally takes a deep breath and words spill out of her mouth. Sheldon tries his best to comprehend the jibber-jabber of the blonde woman, who has firmly entrenched herself in his life like an errant vein, wrapping herself in his world that he has built firmly.

Here is what he gathers: Penny is pregnant. The father is a busboy at the Cheesecake Factory. She doesn’t know what to do. Please do not tell Leonard about this.

He starts to protest about keeping secrets, but upon seeing how upset she is, he keeps his mouth shut. That lasts for 8 seconds; he asks, why are you telling me this? Do you need help? I don’t know what kind of help you are expecting from me. I am not informed in this area of expertise.

She looks at him and just leans forward, her arms wrapping themselves around his torso. He stiffens, no one touches him without first making sure they are danger-free. But he lets her tears (water, mineral salts, antibodies, lysozyme) wet his shirt, and he pats at her shoulder. Once, twice, there there.

Fast forward 7 months, 2 weeks and 4 days. He finds himself pacing the halls of the hospital (he brings along his own bottle of disinfectant). He is the only one there; Leonard has distanced himself from both Penny and himself, when news of Penny’s pregnancy got to him. The busboy, the child’s biological father, has denied all claims (the DNA test will, however, prove him wrong, should Penny file for child support). Raj and Howard are there for Penny, but Sheldon sees (knows) that his role in this is not the same as theirs.

He re-enters the ward. Penny squeezes his hand (pain tolerance: approximately 32.3%, some of Missy’s punches have been worse), he makes sure the doctor and nurses adhere to a strict procedure and hygiene.

The child is born (8 pounds 2 ounces, 22 inches, Apgar score of 9; perfectly healthy), pink and wailing.

Penny names him Aaron. He concedes it is a decent name.

He is 8 months, 12 days old when he speaks coherently. Aaron’s first word is mama, directly at Penny, a lopsided smile as he gurgles after. She grins, a radiant picture of a proud mother.

It takes another 2 days. Aaron points to Sheldon. His fourth word is da.

stumbled, started to slip and fall (maybe for you, now)

wordsflow — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:05:45 GMT

title: stumbled, started to slip and fall (maybe for you, now)
fandom/characters/pairings: Chuck (Chuck/Sarah)
summary: The world doesn’t end, doesn’t come crashing down when she kisses down on his lips so hard, she almost tastes the sweet lace of blood on her tongue. But she’s getting ahead of herself here.
rating: There's sex, so R, probably.
note: Written for Porn Battle IX. Prompts: mission, hope, (possibly) is that the Intersect?, danger, hidden. (Original posting over at the challenge post) Unbetaed, all mistakes are mine, et cetera! Title from A Martyr For My Love For You by The White Stripes, story veers AU from the end of 3.04 Chuck Versus Operation Awesome.

The world doesn’t end, doesn’t come crashing down when she kisses down on his lips so hard, she almost tastes the sweet lace of blood on her tongue.

But she’s getting ahead of herself here.

--

There has always been that fear, the one that filters itself into her dreams and turns them into nightmares, the one where she imagines she’d have to walk across the courtyard, knock on the door and tell Ellie I’m sorry, so sorry, but there has been an accident and Chuck –

She usually stops herself right there.

In another world, Sarah Walker wouldn’t be Sarah Walker, she wouldn’t be Katie O’Connell or Rebecca Franco or Jenny Burton or any of those people with made-up pasts, woven together like some kind of messed up choose your own adventure book. In another world, she could be – oh, she doesn’t know, maybe a teacher of some sort, maybe an architect, a lawyer, a news anchor, definitely not a cook. She could be married, could have a husband and a baby; she could be normal. Real.

What she won’t be, in this world: Mrs. Hector Calderon.

(Chuck made sure of that, he walked away and buried her deep, without knowing her. She had been ready to give up everything, her whole life, everything she’s ever known, for him, and all that she’s gotten back in kind is a smarting slap in the face.

But if she doesn’t think about it, then it’s okay. She’s okay.)

--

There’s a low guttural sound, and it’s coming from Chuck.

Sarah turns her head to the side to look at him.

“I’m not flashing, maybe – maybe there’s nothing to flash on,” he tries, throwing the surveillance photos down on the table, the furrow of his brows not gone unnoticed by her.

“It’s okay, Chuck.”

“It’s just – there’s something there, I know there is. I just can’t get the information to surface.”

“It’s okay, Chuck,” she repeats, fixing her gaze at him. “We’ll figure something out.”

There’s something in his eyes that she can’t quite read. It’s not a feeling she enjoys, but it’s increasingly common nowadays, like because he’s a spy now means he’s got to take the same bricks and lay up a wall. She settles for a little smile, and even that disappears once he turns his attention from her.

Shaw, as it turns out, wants them to go in, flash or no flash. There’s sufficient intel here, he argues – a location, an item. That’s enough. There will be more operatives standing guard this time, so he sends both Chuck and Sarah.

He pulls Sarah aside. “Remember: Don’t coddle him. Don’t cover for him more than you would any other agent. This is the only way he’ll learn and grow to be an efficient agent.”

He folds his arms and awaits her answer.

And so Sarah just bores her eyes at him, no other expression on her face as she nods curtly and turns away.

--

At the CIA, they teach you to never let it become personal, to never expose your vulnerabilities to anyone. They teach you to put aside everything for the greater good: your life, your dreams, your morality. You see the worst in people in the job. Not just the bad guys – everyone's a sinner; it's rarely as simple as black and white. Everyone has something to hide, and it takes a skillful agent to find out what it is.

And Chuck – Chuck is not that guy. Chuck can never become that guy, he of his single-minded grandiose view of espionage, of protecting the world. Bryce had been right: Chuck is too good for this world of lies upon lies, too good for the tangled webs of deceit the people of this world spin.

Chuck’s too good for her world, the world she had been so willing to give up, and there isn’t a day when the bitter echo doesn’t resonate in her brain, and it goes like but Chuck chose this, Chuck chose this life over a life with you and it doesn’t matter his reason, he still did it.

But for all his faults and hers, for all she had risked for him to have a shot at a normal life, he is a hero, and like many heroes before him, he has to choose something to give up.

It’s just unpleasant when logic as she knows it plays out.

--

“Sarah,” he starts, and she recognizes that voice as his ‘we need to talk, really talk’ voice.

She juts her head at the surveillance equipment in the van as a response, shaking her head just a little; her brows knitted together.

“It’s okay, I might have kind of turned it off on the other side remotely.”

Schooling her expression into a neutral one, she half dreads what he wants to say, half terrified. (He has that effect on her and he doesn’t even know it, and it’s just – how can someone be so smart, and so clueless all the time?)

“Look, Sarah.” He scrunches his face a little, searching for the right words to say. “I just want to talk about some things. Between us, for us.” She’s about to protest right off the bat when he cuts in before she gets a word in. “And before you say anything –”

She sighs and does it anyway. “We’re on a mission, Chuck.”

His face breaks into a grin, familiar territory if there is any.

“I knew you were going to say that. See, I think we’re covered by a technicality, because we’re on the way to a mission, but we’re not quite at the mission yet. Unless you mean this ‘cover friends who don’t play video games and hang out casually on Fridays because we’re not there yet’, but we’ll never get to, then yes, we are on a mission. But we’ll always be on that mission and I won’t ever get the chance to say what’s on my mind.”

Then maybe you should keep those thoughts to yourself is what she should say. Instead, “What’s on your mind?” comes out.

A brief look of disbelief crosses Chuck’s face, like he can’t believe she’s allowing him to progress that far. She takes a couple of seconds to look away from the road and at him instead, before turning her attention back. This could turn out to be fine, maybe.

“This friends thing,” he answers, finger quotes in place. “It’s not really working out, is it?”

That pleasant feeling she felt moments ago is completely dissipated, as she grips the steering wheel hard, feeling the uneven surface of the rubber digging into her palms.

“We’re barely seeing each other, or enjoying each other’s company, and I mean what I said before: I miss you. I miss us, just hanging out and talking, and when it doesn’t feel forced or awkward just to be in the same place.”

“Chuck. We’re fine.”

“I just feel like we ought to talk about it.” He’s relentless. “I don’t know about you, but it’s like there’s this big sucking vortex where our interactions used to be, after – after Prague.”

She has to give him credit for looking chastised, still.

“I’m not sure what you’ve been expecting,” she finally concedes, each word tugging at her. For a moment she sees something flicker in his eyes, so she bites her lower lip, and continues. “But if you want to, we can talk. After.”

Chuck gives her that smile, the one that she knows is all hers, and she pencils down in her mental list one more mistake she’s making with him.

--

The first sign of danger should have been when they sneaked through the rows of warehouses completely undetected, even after obtaining the standard-issue non-descript briefcase. More specifically, on hindsight, that should be the first sign of danger.

“Chuck,” she whispers, and she can feel him tense. “Do you have a gun?”

(She does, of course.)

“No, of course not,” he whispers back, but pats his pockets with the hand that isn’t carrying the briefcase. “I have two knives. Well, actually three, I also have a Swiss Army knife.”

“Okay. Keep them in your reach. Let’s keep going.”

They’re walking briskly but carefully; the entire place just being too quiet for her liking, especially with the lack of security. Almost as if the Ring’s anticipating this move from the CIA, and Sarah isn’t liking –

She freezes in her tracks, her arm holding Chuck back, palm resting on his chest. Someone’s approaching, she just doesn’t know from where yet. Reaching her hand behind to rest on the butt of the gun, Sarah quirks her eyebrows towards the side of a warehouse where there are a few big boxes that could hopefully be big enough to let them stay hidden.

That plan is foiled, however, when an operative turns into their path and yells, drawing his gun at them at an impressive speed. But if there’s only one of the Ring and two of them, Sarah figures that they have a good enough chance to knock this one out and run to the car. Her own gun is trained at the enemy.

“Uh, Sarah,” she hears him say, and she turns at his voice. That’s a mistake, because before her mind registers that there are at least half a dozen agents behind them now, one of them with a gun pointed at Chuck, the first man they ran into has disarmed her of her gun.

She holds her hands up, wanting to wait before deciding what their next move should be. But the agent still has his gun trained at Chuck, and she feels a big lump in her throat. Don’t get emotional, think, the efficient agent in her screams.

“You have something important to us,” the one holding the gun at Chuck says, gesturing at the briefcase in his hand. “If you hand it back to us, we’ll go easy with the torture later.”

When neither Chuck nor Sarah moves, another agent points his gun straight at Sarah.

“Or my team and I can kill the both of you and your employers won’t even know where to look for your bodies.”

There’s a look that passes over Chuck’s face, and she knows that he’s flashed. With that knowledge in mind, she gives him a perceptible nod. He’s all a flurry of limbs and kicks and punches, so Sarah concentrates on taking on the agents closer to her too. She’s not fast enough to dodge a bullet that whizzes past her shoulder, grazing it; it’s a good thing that same agent isn’t as good a shot as he is with speed.

With a re-energized bout of adrenaline, Sarah engages in hand-to-hand combat after kicking the gun out of his hand, landing solid punches and kicks before connecting her fist at his jaw, and he goes down like a sack of potatoes. There’s no time to catch her breath, when another agent gets her in a headlock, and she struggles against him.

Chuck’s taken care of all but one of the other operatives, but a misappropriation of attention makes him careless, even with the Intersect, and as Sarah struggles with the built guy currently strangling the life out of her with one arm, terror shot at her heart and it isn’t for herself. She musters enough strength, just enough to use the back of her head to stun her attacker, and as he recovers from the shock she kicks at his big, fat head and the man groans, before passing out all the same like the other.

But she’s still a fraction of a second too late, she whips around and

oh

Chuck

No!

Lunging herself forward with all her might, she hears the loud bang of the gun go off, and her heart catches in her throat.

Chuck stares at the bullet hole in the wall of a warehouse, less than an eighth of an inch away from where his head was, his mouth dropping in shock. She wastes no time in picking up a discarded gun on the ground and pressing the trigger with almost trembling hands, and the last man goes down.

Breathing heavily, she looks at him, feeling the relief course through her veins, feeling her heart pound fast against her chest all the same. And her mind goes into overdrive; she almost lost him today, again, and she’s in way too deep, and oh god, she wants to throw up she almost lost him and he could have died and it would have been really real and then what the fuck is she supposed to do and, just.

She forces herself to take another deep breath, calming herself down. Trying to, at the very least, while Chuck gapes at her, the look on his face rolling confusion with terror and adrenaline and doubt in a myriad all at once.

She pulls him along quickly, urgently, and they run.

--

He has that same look on his face, but Sarah’s determined, her mind connecting remarkably quickly during the short drive back. This whole feelings, talking about it thing, she’s not so good at, but actions, actions she can do. It isn’t the smoothest way, or the best way, or even logical (and her brain keeps telling her to stop being impulsive, stop making this mistake, you said you won’t do this again, why do you keep doing this, you’re going to destroy everything –

She pushes these thoughts deep under, when she takes his hand and pulls them both inside her hotel room. It’s plenty dark in there but it doesn’t matter.

Chuck looks at her. “Sarah, your arm. We should get back to Castle or something.”

She shakes her head at him, said arm wrapping itself around his neck as she moves closer, tilting her head so that their foreheads are touching for a moment before she stares at his lips.

And so:

The world doesn’t end, doesn’t come crashing down when she kisses down on his lips so hard, she almost tastes the sweet lace of blood on her tongue.

“What are we –”

“Shh,” she says, sucking in a quick breath, her hands working deftly on his belt buckle. The arm throbs numbly, but it isn’t something she can’t handle. “Don’t.”

But Chuck, far from being the smooth operative he wants to be, just stares at her in confusion. Not that he’s stopping her either, as she unloops his belt and tosses it on the floor, before continuing with the lip lock, tongue/mouth exploring, catch and release thing they had going on. (That pants tugging thing, well, that’s new now from him.)

She guides him forward; he stumbles back a little and finds his bearings on the mattress.

“Sarah,” he breathes out, breaking away for as long to do so. “If we do this…”

“If we do this,” she echoes, her eyes shining. “We can do anything. Trust me.”

He only takes a microsecond to think that over.

--

If she doesn’t know things, she might think that it’s the Intersect that’s making Chuck do the things he’s doing to her, the way he knows exactly where to place his hands and lips and tongue, things that would make a grown woman blush just thinking about them. But she has her post-rehearsal dinner, full service Chuck Bartowski experience to draw from, and Sarah knows that 2.0 or not, Chuck is Chuck, one hundred percent, complete, total. Real. Alive. Hers, at the moment.

Not that she’s too shabby herself, not with the way Chuck moans as she rolls the condom expertly on him, dropping the wrapper swiftly on the floor. His fingers press against her back and when she meets her mouth against his and sucked at his tongue again, Chuck pushes her body closer, and she can feel just how hard he is.

“There’s no turning back, is there,” he asks, not even bothering to intone it like it’s a question and Sarah feels a small sardonic smile growing on her face, her hand trailing down his length. He shudders.

“We could,” she starts, almost a gleam in her eye, “Stop this right now and go back to our designated cover.”

“No. God, no, please don’t.”

Sarah can feel the flush on her face as Chuck rolls his thumb and forefinger against her nipple, before moving them down past her stomach, flicking gently at his final intended location, and a sound slips from her throat. She reciprocates in kind, pushing her hips and grinding against his, and she can hear him sucking in a breath. Chuck’s fingernails dig into her back bluntly, punctuated only by the series of kisses he leaves on her neck down her collarbone, some of them hard enough to leave tiny bruises.

She wraps her legs around him as he thrusts into her, whispering her name over and over. She’s arching back and lets herself get lost in the moment, just a moment, before yanking herself back, panting as she does so; he buries his face into her neck. But she pulls him back, meeting her swollen mouth with his again in an attempt to mute the noises coming from her, and she murmurs his name against his mouth ever so lightly, her body trembling as she gets close.

And then he’s gone too, and she curls her fingers around his neck and kisses him one more time, before rolling herself off; laying their hot, sticky bodies by their sides, as she breathes heavily.

He does the same, and meets his forearm on his head. Sarah observes from a side-glance appreciatively just how defined his muscles are, his biceps tightening as he bends his elbow and his pecs, glistening with the sweat as his chest rises and falls; he’s inhaling hard to catch his breath.

There are at least thirty seconds of silence, comfortable as they are. She feels her heartbeat gradually going back to normalcy, and is about to say something, anything, almost hearing the unasked questions in the air.

But Chuck beats her to it (of course he does); he turns around and faces her, his brown eyes just burning with such intensity that it takes her breath away.

“Is that – was that closure, or something resembling a beginning?” He wants to know, and she can hear the hope clinging on to the words.

She sighs, looks up at the ceiling. When she doesn’t immediately answer, he continues.

“Or, or is it something you do, after a dangerous mission? I mean, I’ll like to know. Brace myself, if you will. For the future. If that’s a future, for us.”

“Chuck.” He talks too much, way too much, she thinks. But she shifts her body, careful not to lean on her injury, and faces him.

“When you said that if we do this, we can do anything – that’s something you said just to get things along, isn’t-”

She cuts him off, mid-inquiry. “Do you trust me?”

“You know I do.” This time, there’s no preamble, no hesitation. It’s clear as crystal.

She leans closer, smiles into the kiss. “Then we’ll make it work.”

take these leaps and chances

wordsflow — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 03:46:38 GMT

title: take these leaps and chances
fandom/characters/pairings: How I Met Your Mother (Barney/Robin, Lily/Marshall, Ted/Mother)
summary: She knows these things, and that's always going to be enough for them.
rating: Not more than a PG-13
note: Written for astraevirgo for yuletide 2009! (Original posting at Archive of our Own) Thank you katayla for the beta. ♥

It happens from one day, to the next.

On Thursday, Robin is sauntering down to the bar where she'll find the rest of the gang and catch them for a few minutes-that-would-likely-turn-into-hours before trekking to work, and trying to stop that whining voice in her head, the one that keeps telling her that she can do better, has to do better, needs to do better. It's that voice that pushes her to interview for newer, better jobs, even though her chances are about a bazillion to one. She hasn't gotten a single call-back though, so Robin's stuck between wanting to take her aggression out on an unsuspecting paper target or yelling obscenities at the television screen, while hanging out with her Canadian buddies at the Hoser Hut.

By the time Friday comes around, everything's… well, changed.

Thursday, though. Thursday night she sits in the booth next to Barney, Lily and Marshall opposite them, and Ted occupies the solo chair. There is a certain gleam in his eyes, one that she doesn't quite exactly recognize, but knows that something big, and epic, and undoubtedly romantic (hello, it's Ted) is running through his head. Lily's been feeling crummy all day, and Marshall's all How are you feeling, baby? every few minutes, and Barney is... Barney. He leers at girls at the bar, tells the rest of them a new theory he's been working on. Robin just sits against the booth, a neat scotch in her hand.

(And it nags at her, a little: Ted's a college professor, and Lily's a kindergarten teacher; Marshall might think he sold out working for a company like GNB, but he's still a practicing lawyer at least, and Barney -- please, she's been sworn to secrecy, stacked under five heavy oaths with dire consequences should she let it slip. So. Barney's doing whatever he does.

Robin? Robin's announcing fluff pieces at four in the morning. With an ex. Who still doesn't wear pants and struts around in his tighty-whities every Wednesday and Friday. So swell, right?)

(And not in the punny way, either, ew. That's just gross.)

--

She's the first one to arrive at work, the frigid cold air of the recording studio blowing straight at her hair. It only takes a few more minutes, surprisingly, for said ex-boyfriend to walk through that door. With pants, thankfully. Robin isn't sure how much more she can take of that.

"Whatcha doing?" Don asks, his eyes twinkling as if everything's still a huge joke around him. And she gets it, she gets that he's jaded, that this is his way of coping, but self-destruction has never been something she's interested in. Yes, it always comes to her naturally for some reason, but that's a whole other story altogether.

So she pulls her lips into a tight, awkward smile, gesturing at her little pink and purple netbook on the desk.

"Just checking my email, you know. Normal stuff."

"It's 3:45 in the morning, you're not going to get any emails from anyone important, Robin."

She doesn't answer him; her eyes are fixed on the email she's reading. Robin's got the habit of a) not really checking her email on time, and b) scanning things for important keywords, and this email goes like this: Job offer, MSNBC, impressive interview, news anchor, call this number, wage negotiation, welcome aboard.

That night – morning technically, her own mental Ted corrected her – that night she quits Come On, Get Up New York, wishes all of them the best of luck, and even manages not to sound bitchy by gloating about it.

She nearly knocks into Ted, her on her way up and him down, rushing to his class, yelling something about being late, being totally late and I'll blame Sara but -- and Robin can't hear the rest.

Robin enters their apartment, flops down her bed and closes her eyes. She thinks about breathing methods for steadying a gun, of balancing on the ice and hitting the puck at the right angle.

And in an instant it rushes over her. She quit her job. She's going to be an anchor for MSNBC. One of the biggest cable news channel ever, and she's going to be seen by millions of people.

Shit. This is huge.

--

The night comes. Tonight isn't a usual beer or even a scotch kind of night at MacLaren's, so Robin orders shots of vodka for herself. No better time to celebrate, she reasons, it's a brave new world kind of Friday night, new job, no more rut, no more feeling sorry about herself and then taking it out on the shooting range, even if shooting is still fucking awesome and really, that's just an excuse to go there anyway, and Scherbatskys don't need excuses to shoot. Nope, no more any of that, and it's refreshing. Minty fresh, even. Although thinking about mint made her hungry. She needs some hot wings or something, to keep her stomach from churning itself with the alcohol. Maybe some fries. Hell, she'll take all the unhealthy stuff for the night. Like the alcohol isn't empty calories enough. When was the last time she went to the gym?

Tonight is looking like a distracted night too, almost unfair to Barney. If he's saying something actually substantial, that is.

"And so we take the correlation between picking women up at the bar at midnight – that's 83% – and between one and three in the morning – that's –" Barney stops short, and stares at Ted. "Why are you smiling like that?" He shudders. "It's kind of creeptastic."

But it's Marshall who's fidgeting, it's Marshall who blurts out, "No, nothing out of the ordinary is happening with Lily and me, we don't have any big news or anything. No, of course not, what can we have anything to have big news about? That's preposterous, and you should feel silly for even thinking that!"

Ted throws him a weird look, but the smile never fades from his face. It looks like he's scratching his thigh or something, but the next moment he produces a velvet box from his pocket with a flourish, and places it on the table, staring at it.

"This ring has been burning in my pocket for the past eight hours!" He lifts his head. "Actual flames, guys, I'm serious."

So Robin casts a glance at Barney, on reflex. Right on, she thinks - stricken expression, eyes bugged out, mouth left in a gape. The strangled voice comes almost instantly.

"Nooo! Ted, no!"

"Sara and I have been dating for a year and two months! I'm madly in love with her! I can't think of a better time to ask."

"Uh, try never. Ted, marriage is the chain and ball – to your balls! Think about it! Your steel curfew! No more wild escapades with your best friend and wingman, no more crazy adventures to tell all the chicks you can still pick up -"

Ted shakes his head vehemently, but Barney's still faster than him.

"My point is, you cannot do that! The sanctity of the bro-hood! Do you dare taint that, Theodore Vivian Mosby?"

"That's still not my middle name."

Barney ignores him. "What are you going to tell the youngins in twenty years? That you're falling into a lame trap-conspiracy like Marshall?"

"Lily's pregnant!"

"Who, by the way - What?"

"What?" Robin and Ted's voices join in the chorus.

--

By 11 PM, Lily and Marshall are long gone and Ted skips out after, destination: Sara's apartment. Something about a burst water pipe, and Barney winks at him, and Ted protests, and Barney winks again, and Robin's left shaking her head in amusement and, not wanting to break their very stimulating discussion, jabs her thumb at the door, the universal sign for scooting.

In the midst of the excitement, she hasn't told them her own big news.

As the two men bounce up the stairs, Robin's fingers tingle against the box of cigarettes in her purse, even if she's picked up Marshall's horrid habit of Last Cigarette Ever. The last Last Cigarette Ever was two weeks ago, and even then she's found herself slipping back into the habit.

"No, Barney, I will not be describing in detail how pre-engaged sex is like," says Ted in about the most patient voice he can muster. Barney joins her on the sidewalk, grinning, the sides of his eyes crinkling with laugh lines as they watch Ted run off to flag a cab.

It's a pretty chilly night in New York, but even as the goosebumps prickle on her forearms, she pays them no attention. There's only one way to ride out the coldness, and that's to just bear it. Barney, on the other hand, is working those long sleeves on his suit more so than ever. She thinks he's about 3% away from being a girl, pulling out a woolen scarf to wrap around his neck or something.

The thing is, Robin alternates between Thank God That's Over, and I Kind Of Miss It, Maybe, when it comes to Barney. It's weird, really, because when they were together, it's like there was some kind of magnet drawing away their awesomeness and leaving them with hollow vessels of themselves. If Robin allows herself, she could blame Lily for that great downfall, because things went so swimmingly well when they didn't have any stupid labels on each other. What's even weirder (that she doesn't want to acknowledge, doesn't even want to think about) is that with Ted, it feels like a closed chapter of a book she might pick up again for nostalgia's sake. With Barney? It still feels like an unfinished Choose Your Own Adventure book; turn to page 54 for an afternoon of laser tag fun, turn to page 113 for the inevitable downfall.

Robin's the type to go through a Choose Your Own Adventure book quickly, getting a sucky ending, and then flipping through the pages to read through all the other possible endings out of spite.

The enveloping silence tips her jar over, making her need to share her good news with someone. There's nothing such as 'too much excitement' for one Barney Stinson.

"So, I quit my job," she starts.

He has that exact same stricken expression he had when Ted fished the ring box out, and she rushes to complete her statement.

"But I have a new one, at MSNBC, as an actual anchor. Of actual news. This is good, right?"

Immediately his face relaxes, and he's pointing to nowhere in particular with his right hand, punctuating his words one hand movement at a time.

"Good? No, this is better than good, this is legen - wait for it; I haven't used this word in a long time because there hasn't been an event of awesome epic proportions like this until now - dary! Truly legendary." A proud smile hangs on his face. "Look at you, Scherbatsky. All grown up and ready to meet the big world."

"Are those tears in your eyes?"

"What?" he scoffs, yet daps at his eyes anyway. "No, of course not. It's the collision of awesome molecules that materialized as moisture. There's no crying or tears whatsoever."

Robin leans forward to give him a hug. There's a tight bit of hesitancy, but that gives way almost as quickly as it came.

"Thank you, Barney."

The confusion dances in his eyes as they pull away. There's that slanty look, too, the one that Robin learned to spot a long time ago. "I didn't do anything. The YouTube clips of your show that have over hundred of thousands of views aren't uploaded by me. Or viewed by me. I'm not responsible for anything."

"No, silly. For believing in me. For actually watching the show or TiVoing it, or - whatever recording device you got from the Japanese for it." He opens his mouth to protest, but Robin shakes her head. "For being an awesome friend."

"Yeah, well, duh. I am awesome."

She lets out a chuckle before punching him lightly in his arm.

"So, what do you say to just the two of us single people extending this night of celebration?"

"Robin, Robin, Robin. I've got plenty of girl-shaped "friends" (with actual finger quotes) stashed and sorted according to zip codes -"

"Seriously, Barney."

"Lusty Leopard!"

"I was thinking more of," she stops herself before she continues with the thought of going back inside the bar. Delightfully boring, and everything's changing around her anyway, why shouldn't she too? So: "Oh, fuck it. Lusty Leopard it is."

--

She doesn't remember how, or when (she vaguely remembers getting out of Lusty Leopard and into the cab), but somehow she's at Barney's place, on his couch, and she's straddling him, her hand tugging at the lapels of his jacket first, then his tie. He's doing that thing with his tongue in her mouth, his hands working deftly on her coat and it's undoubtedly clear he's a seasoned pro.

"What are we doing?" she asks, biting down gently on his lower lip and she hears that guttural moan at the back of his throat.

"Uh, having sex, really really awesome celebration sex," he barely manages to choke out, tossing her clothes to the floor as he pushes their bodies closer together, and it's probably the alcohol, the fact that it's after two in the morning, but Robin thinks that this is the best damned idea tonight, and continues to kiss him hard, and then they're moving it to the bedroom, and then -

The next morning she wakes up with a killer headache.

Barney's nowhere to be found in the room, but she hears the faint sounds of the shower running. So she does the only logical thing in this situation: she sends him a text message, and gets the hell out of there. One time only, okay?

Ten minutes later, on her way back home, her phone buzzes, and it reads, Okay.

(They don't speak of it again after that.)

--

Three weeks into her new job, people start recognizing Robin more.

The job at MSNBC is busy and tiring, but it's the good kind of busy and tired, so Robin doesn't complain. If she plays her cards right and work hard, she might one day actually inch closer to her goal of being a foreign correspondent, traveling around the world, reporting on key issues. For now, however, the anchor job is a very lucrative one, and she isn't about to do anything to sabotage it.

McGee's is no MacLaren's, but it's not always a bad thing. A different bar means different crowds, and besides, Robin has no intentions of playing the third wheel with Ted and Sara. The two have been so nauseatingly couple-y since the engagement; not that Robin blames either of them. She likes Sara – Sara is sweet, but feisty in small bites. She handles Ted and goes together with him like peanut butter and jelly, she fits in well enough with the gang, and most of all, she's no Robin. Sara wants to get married, wants the 2.5 kids and the dog and the house with the picket fences, all of which are exactly the same in Ted's visions of the future. In short, she is Ted's perfect woman.

Robin, on the other hand, holds the dubious record of a one-day engagement to Barney Stinson. Where the hell did that come from? And who even does that? She's played relationship chicken all her life, if she's being honest with herself, and in no other relationship did that disaster emerge. Robin doesn't tread well on what is considered traditional couple things. Sure, brunch is awesome, but the pet names and endearments and rituals, that isn't her; that has never, ever been her. She doesn't like sharing her food and doesn't like the constant nagging, or the phone calls checking to see if she's still alive, or at least that's what it seems like to Robin with the amount of urgency the calls are made.

You'd think that out of so many people in New York, half of them men, Robin would date the ones who flinch at commitment as much as she does. Yet, somehow she manages to snag the ones whose endpoints in 'dating' end up some place between 'marriage in a big white church and/or the beach' and 'watching grandchildren run off to play'. What is that all about, anyway? It's like Marshall infected everybody with that one kind of love and destroyed all the rest.

Robin ~~knows~~ thinks she isn't incapable of love, and that thought pisses her off.

Half an hour later and with two glasses of scotch in her warm belly, Robin announces that she is going to swear off men forever in her head, until someone's yelling 'You go, girl!' in her ears and she realizes she said that part out loud. Whoops.

After that, though, she gets her drinks sent to her from this guy at the bar. Raising her scotch at him, she nods her head to show her appreciation. There's some 'You're that girl from the news, right?' discussion when he slides himself into the booth opposite her, but an hour later, she's stumbling into his apartment, his sloppy kisses all over her cheeks, her neck, her jawline –

She draws in a deep breath and stops him, tells him that she's sorry, and then she's running off. And she's asking herself what the hell just happened, but she can't switch that whining voice off again, that same one that tells her that she can do better, has to do better, needs to do better.

When she reaches home, Ted and Sara are cuddling on the couch, and that's when she decides that she needs to move out into her own apartment again.

--

"Luke Skywalker Eriksen."

"No."

"Indiana Jones Eriksen."

"No."

"Cordell Walker Eriksen."

"No."

Marshall's face lights up.

"Chuck –"

"Finish that thought, Marshall. I dare ya."

Marshall throws his hands up in the air in exasperation. "But baby, you shot down every single one of my suggestions! I have nothing left." There's a beat. "And I was going to say 'Bartowski'."

"Yeah, because you want your son to have a super computer in his brain," Robin says.

Barney chooses that moment to walk to their table at the restaurant, his face brightens when he hears Robin, and Lily groans.

"Oh, no, Robin, take that back, take that back! He's going to go on his droid theory again."

"It's not a theory if it's already put in motion! Do you never read my blog?" He sits on the chair next to Robin, leaving the two chairs opposite at the end of the table for Ted and Sara. "Hot topic: the ability to build your own super computer droid to function as the perfect woman."

"And what, exactly, is your definition of the perfect woman?" Robin challenges, as she props her head on the heel of her hand.

"Um, hot, with the ability to change her nationality at will because take note, guys, half-Asians are making a comeback. Also, inflatable breasts."

"What are you going to do with inflatable breasts?" She pauses. Then she shakes her head. "Actually, no, I don't want to know."

"You should name it," Barney points at Lily's protruding belly, "Barnabus Robin Osby Eriksen. Bro Eriksen."

"Osby. Really." Robin tilts her head at him.

"I needed an O in there and that's the closest I could get."

Lily clears her throat.

"Look, nobody's going to name my son anything less than sensible. Marshall, stop pouting. Robin, you're my best friend, but it's so hard to pair a nice-sounding boy name with your name as the middle name."

Barney sits up straighter, like he just had a revelation. "Christopher Robin!"

Robin has to actually, really, turn her body to stare at him for that.

"You know, Pooh," he tells them, like he thinks he doesn't know they know that. "Come on, the name even comes built in with its own awesome pick-up line! Wanna hear it?"

"No!" Lily exclaims. "You are not tainting my baby's mind with your filthy talk!"

Barney, as usual, ignores her anyway. "'Hey, wanna see my Winnie... the Pooh?' How awesome is that?!"

"Negative one for effort," Robin smirks, and Barney lapses into a discussion about names for certain appendages, and it ends mercifully when Ted comes in with Sara, their hands linked.

Sometimes, Robin feels really odd to still be sitting in the group. There's Marshall and Lily, with the baby. And then there's Ted and Sara, busy with getting married and probably already planning on the many babies they're going to have. It makes her feel like a square peg in a circular hole, kind of fitting but... not really.

That night, she dreams of wearing a wedding gown and being walked down the aisle by Alan Thicke, and there are babies everywhere. She wakes up with her heart pounding against her ribs, her breath shallow, and she thinks, what a freaking nightmare.

--

The next time it happens, it's the night of Ted's wedding. She's had about five glasses of wine too many, and Barney isn't picking up a bridesmaid (Sara made him swear not to); instead he's escorting Robin back home. She's giggling, like it's a big joke, but when it comes down to it she ~~thinks~~ knows that she a) is lonely and b) hasn't had sex in a while. Barney being there is more of a convenience and a means to the end than anything else.

(They don't speak of this, either.)

--

"Please, please, please, Robin, you have to do this!" Barney pleads with her.

"I can't! I haven't in such a long time..."

"You can do it! I know you can! We've done it so many times before!"

Robin sighs. She fingers the laser gun laid so neatly in Barney's hands. And then their eyes connect, and she nods.

"Fine, but only this once, okay?"

This year, the Laser Storm National Championship is held in New York. Naturally, Barney signs up. He also signs James up for the doubles competition. Unfortunately, Danny the toddler has come down with something, and now Barney is minus one laser tag partner.

The Stinson-Scherbatsky duo is on fire through the competition, eliminating the enemies and finally getting to the last match of the day. If they win this, they get to be state champions, and even Robin's completely psyched for it.

"Strategy meeting! Scherbatsky, you go in first. Shoot to kill, I'll cover you."

"Wait, wait, how about..."

She lays out her plan; there are decoys and false alarms involved. It's her 'all-in' plan and it will either work brilliantly, or blow up in their faces. By the end of her explanation, Barney is completely on board.

They win, of course. As they walk up to the stage, she takes the trophy, Barney is gloating, and the next thing she knows, the trophy's back on the table and they're kissing and wow, is that a weird moment or what? Slowly noticing the crowd and their hooting and cheering, she pulls away, and there's an unreadable expression on his face, but that quickly gives way to a self-assured grin and holds his palm up to her.

"Winners' five!"

She smacks that. Hard.

That sting in her palm is probably the most normal thing in this situation now.

--

Noah Marvin Eriksen is the only red-faced screaming baby in the nursery when Robin sees him for the first time. She's still scared of babies, but hey, she's a safe distance away and no one's asking her to touch one or anything (yet), and so she stares at Noah's little face, watches as he stops crying and fussing.

"I have so much work ahead of me," the voice behind her says, and she almost jumps. It turns out to only be Barney, obviously, as he sidles up beside her.

"You know Lily will come at you with a cleaver if you put your plans into fruition, right?"

"Yeah, maybe. But it's all going to be worth it. True story. Picture this: twenty years later, at the bar, I'm flanked by Danny and Noah, my wingmen for the night."

"Huh. That's the dream."

He sticks his hands into his pockets, then takes them out uncomfortably.

"Listen, Robin..."

This time, finally, this time Robin is sober, Robin is thinking straight, and Robin doesn't let him finish his sentence when she cashes that all-in chip, crashing her lips into his.

"I know."

--

Robin knows a lot more this time. She knows that they don't need to be the best couple in the world; they don't even need to resemble any of the couples they know, and most, most importantly of all, they don't need to fall into the mold of labels. They don't need a conversation to tell them where they stand with each other or stupid pet names and they don't need to avoid fights; hell, make-up sex is still amazing. She knows that love comes in different packages and forms, and knows that what she and Barney have – have had, all these time – can't be put away neatly, because of who they each are. And she knows that that's okay.

She knows these things, and that's always going to be enough for them.

--

(They do have that conversation, ways away, in the future, and it goes like this: They're going to stay awesome this time, the end.)