A/N: I appreciate everyone who's read and reviewed this story. End of the line. I said it would be just a few chapters and I meant it. Thanks for humoring me with this one.

Here is the last part of Chuck Versus the Airline. Thanks for reading, folks!

Disclaimer: I don't own CHUCK. I'm not making any money.

He'd pushed the entire concept of time out of his brain, out of his existence, so he didn't know how long it had lasted. All he knew was that they'd kept going. They kept diving back in over and over and over...and over.

Chuck felt a certain tightness in his thighs that made him think his muscles would be aching tomorrow...or later today, assuming it was well after midnight. Or something like that. Time didn't matter.

What mattered was that he had been through some utter shit in his life. He'd been through some utter shit that very day, even. And all of it felt...okay…because of what had just happened.

An incredible woman he'd just met in a freaking airport mere hours ago had slept with him. They'd just had a lot of sex. More sex than if he added up the sex he'd had in the years since he was twenty-one put together.

He was exhausted.

He'd never felt more energized. More alive.

His whole body felt like someone had stuck him on a spit and lowered him into a fire like he was a marshmallow.

This was insane. It was the best thing that had ever happened to him in his entire life. And it was absolutely nuts. He never thought of this as something Chuck Bartowski would do; sleeping with some woman he'd met in an airport, the ridiculous situation aside. Sure, she was fantastic. Yes, she'd come onto him just as much as he'd come onto her, which was driving him out of his mind just trying to figure that out. But it just wasn't usually his style. Sex had never been something he just...dove into. Maybe because he'd never had that kind of opportunity before. Maybe he'd just never wanted a woman like this before. Maybe he'd never had that singular, sizzling connection with any other woman.

Be that as it may, there was no way he was letting himself resist when she made it clear what she wanted. Because he wanted it, too. So badly. (He still wanted it, if he was honest with himself, but he thought maybe another break would be a better idea.)

But she'd wanted him back. And that was something he was having a hard time comprehending. His brain just couldn't compute a woman like Sarah Walker meeting him, spending time with him, and then actually wanting to have sex with him. Were the gods finally blessing him after taking dump after dump after dump on his existence for so long?

And as he felt the hand resting on his waist drift down to stroke the outside of his thigh and drag back up curl around torso, a smooth, lithe, bare body cuddling up against his side, he decided they had to be blessing him. He was being rewarded unfairly. Maybe the folks who handled this sort of Miracle Situation Assignment job up there mixed his name up with someone else's. Some guy named Buck Tarkowski had gotten screwed over.

He chuckled silently at that thought. He thought he might be punch-drunk from the mind-blowing sex.

"Mmm'what?" came the deep, crackling voice that made his blood heat up almost immediately.

Chuck glanced down at her face that was pressed into his shoulder. "Hm? Oh. Nothin'. Just had one of those stupid thoughts people have sometimes. Nothing even worth voicing."

"I'll let you have that," she said, amusement in her voice.

"Thank you." He snorted. "Not to…" He cleared his throat then, wondering if he really should. And he thought, after tonight, to hell with it. He would anyway. "Not to be crude or...whatever...but can I just ask where...where you learned to do...that?" he asked.

She pushed herself up to lean on her elbow and hover half over him, looking down into his face with a furrowed brow. Her blond hair was tousled, her eyelids heavy, a look of utter satisfaction on her face, and he was sure he'd never seen anything or anyone this beautiful ever in his entire twenty-six years of life. And he never would again, he thought to himself. "Do what?" she asked.

He made a face. "You know... That." When she still looked confused, he cleared his throat and rolled his eyes self-deprecatingly. "Why don't I just act like an adult and say it?" He huffed. "All of the things you did when we were having sex. I just...How? I guess that's what I'm asking. How the hell did you…? Because I mean, I—I dunno, I'm completely killing it, aren't I? I'm killing the entire thing. I need to learn how to just keep my mouth shut."

She'd begun giggling as he spiraled.

Chuck flopped his head against the pillow and rolled his eyes.

"There's no way for me to really answer that," she said, and he thought at least she was amused and he hadn't made it so there was an air of awkwardness around them. "It's just…sex." She shrugged. "I do what feels good."

She squeezed his side and he decided that felt good. Having her half on top of him also felt good.

"That's a pretty good tactic, I have to say. I mean, it worked really well. Maybe we should change the subject so that I stop saying idiotic shit."

Sarah laughed and lowered her face to tuck it under his chin, draping her body over his like an incredible blanket, skin to skin, and she cuddled him tightly.

Chuck wrapped his arms around her and smiled into her hair. "This is crazy. It's okay for me to say that, right?"

"Oh, it's absolutely insane," she agreed. "But...I'm not complaining." She pulled back and looked down at him. "You gave me absolutely no reason to complain."

Her meaning wasn't lost on him and he couldn't help the massive grin stretching over his face. Or the blush. "And you made missing my flight and the comedy of errors that occurred after that ten thousand percent worth it. More than worth it. I'd miss my flight one hundred times over for this." He whistled and got a teasing shove to his shoulder for it.

She giggled and he thought he detected a blush on her face too.

"What would Greta and Wanda say if they saw us now?" he continued.

"Oh my God, stop!" she exclaimed, cracking up. She went to smack him this time but he caught her hand in his. He saw just a quick mischievous glint in her gorgeous blue eyes as a warning, but he was too blissful to act on it, and he found both of his arms pulled up, his wrists pinned to the pillow above his head. She straddled him and arched one eyebrow down at him.

He had a feeling she let him break her grip on purpose so that he could round her waist and flip her onto her back, climbing over her with a triumphant "ha HAAA!" straight out of The Princess Bride. She squeaked and giggled, grabbing his hands and beginning the wrestling in earnest.

Chuck pushed any lingering thoughts about what this was, about what it might be...could be...out of his head as they rolled back and forth on the bed, laughing and gasping for breath around heated kisses. When she finally sank onto him again, he whimpered and reached up to brace himself the headboard.

He let himself get lost in it. He let himself drown in her. If he never came back up for air, he'd be happy. The happiest he'd ever been in his entire life.

}o{

The clock read four in the morning, but she couldn't sleep just yet. He'd fallen asleep maybe a half-hour earlier and as creepy as she felt for it, she just watched him, her front pressed tight against his side.

His curls stuck up every which way, but she could see distinct tracks in them from the trail her fingers had made. And his eyelashes were crazy long, resting against his cheeks. There was a tiny little upturned bit at the end of his nose, and his mouth seemed to almost angle up at the corners naturally. Or maybe he was just incredibly satisfied even in his sleep.

She'd noticed how candid he was about expressing his pleasure. He hadn't held back at all, letting her know how good she made him feel. Which meant he'd made sure she was well-aware of just how much she'd knocked it out of the park, so to speak.

And really, so had he.

He'd sincerely surprised her. Not that he seemed like he'd be bad—until they sat side by side in bed together, the flirtation heating up, she hadn't actually thought of what he'd be like in bed. It hadn't occurred to her even slightly. He was a nice, cute guy—a stranger she'd just met who seemed like a good enough person—and then...well, the physical desire hit her like a wrecking ball. Or maybe it had been building and she didn't recognize it. Either way, she would've been surprised if any man she'd slept with had been as fantastic in bed as Chuck ended up being.

He'd put every bit of himself into it. He'd done everything. She didn't know how she knew that; she'd just felt it. It was overwhelming. She thought he must have kissed every last inch of her body. Even there, which she really hadn't expected at all. And he'd done it more than once in just the few hours since they kissed.

But it wasn't until halfway through the night that she was hit with a serious realization. The timing hadn't been great because she'd been on top of him, literally in the middle of having sex with him. He'd had this look on his face, under the obvious pleasure. He'd looked up at her with more than just awe and desire. It wasn't anything she'd ever seen before. It wasn't something she really even understood.

But it changed the way everything had felt from that point on.

The explanation she'd given herself for the mounting flirtation between them, the way she began looking at him differently both over dinner and especially once they got back to the motel room, was that he represented a normalcy she wanted to feel, even if just for one night. She wanted to touch it, taste it...even if only for a moment. Before she went back to her life as a CIA agent who hid in the shadows and used different names on each mission.

She'd been wrong, though.

That wasn't what this was.

Looking into his eyes in that moment, their foreheads pressed together, fingers threaded together on the pillow where she'd pinned his hands with her own, she realized it wasn't just what he represented. It wasn't just normalcy.

It was him.

It was Chuck Bartowski. This guy she didn't know at all, except that he was warm, kind, thoughtful, legitimately hilarious, fun to be around, genuine… And that was enough to know that this would not have happened with any regular dude around her age that the airline might've stuck her with. This happened because of who he was.

There was a real and serious connection between Agent Sarah Walker and this particular person who now slept soundly beside her, his arm furthest from her falling off the side of the bed and hanging there limply.

Letting out a quiet giggle, she carefully stretched over him and gently picked up his heavier-than-she-expected arm, setting it on the mattress next to his hip. He'd wake up with no feeling in that arm if she didn't help him out. And she smirked at the way he didn't even budge after all of that.

He was out cold.

And maybe she was kind of satisfied that she'd done that. Also, it was four in the morning, but she was going to give herself credit anyway.

She'd done that. But she needed to figure out was what she was going to do now that she'd done that.

Because she hadn't just slept with someone; that was something she'd done enough times before to know this was very different. This was so much more than just sex, and she didn't have to be normal to figure that out. She wasn't a regular girl by any means, but she knew what just sex felt like, and this hadn't felt that way at all.

He'd held her in a way that triggered something deep inside of her, and she knew that she'd held him back in the same way.

The only thing now was that she didn't know what she was supposed to do about it.

Once the plane touched down in Miami tomorrow night, or rather, tonight, that was it. They'd go their separate ways. Him to his conference he didn't want to be at, and her to find Irving McClocken. She had a difficult assignment ahead of her, and she'd need every last ounce of her focus, no distractions.

She'd have to break away from this.

And it hurt to think about it way more than was probably healthy.

She quietly laid back against the pillows, putting a few inches of distance between them, and she stared at the ceiling, trying to ignore the ache. This hadn't been a very good idea in hindsight, but she'd thought it'd be sex and nothing else. Or...well, she didn't know what she'd thought anymore.

She was going to be wrecked by this. She just knew it.

People didn't have experiences like this and just...move past them. She could try, and God knew she'd try really, really, really hard. But she would fail. This felt so...once in a lifetime.

And maybe she didn't deserve this, Agent Walker thought to herself. Maybe she didn't deserve even this, let alone more than this, with a man who was most likely better than any person she would ever meet again. Certainly better than she was. She'd just murdered someone fifteen hours ago.

He'd find some woman who deserved him after all was said and done. Extraordinary guys like this always did, right?

They did in the movies.

Even mediocre guys got great women sometimes.

As Sarah turned her head and peered at him, she decided that she was already in this deep, already in a lot of trouble emotionally, she might as well go a little further. There would be a lot of hurt later, she knew, but right now, she would enjoy, revel in the safety and comfort of him.

So she rolled back over and cuddled up against him, laying her head on his chest and rounding his torso with her arm. In spite of sleep eluding her before, his warmth and the rhythmic beating of his heart under her ear put her to sleep almost immediately.

}o{ Four weeks later }o{

"Lester, I swear to God, if you don't take your tongue off of that cardboard cut-out of Xena Warrior Princess, I will murder you by putting the Blu-ray for season eight of One Tree Hill into a blender and forcing you to drink it in front of your family!"

Lester pulled back from the cut-out and spun on Chuck, gasping. "Charles, you know that is my least favorite season!"

"Exactly."

Jeff shook his head in a daze. "Whoa, Blu-ray. That's way more high-definition than a DVD. That's an HD smoothie, dude. You can't say no to that."

What in Sam Hill…?

Chuck gestured back towards the break room. "Just—just go! Just get off the sales floor. I can't handle either of you today, okay? Go."

"We still get paid?"

"I don't write your paychecks, do I? Just go. Both of you."

They shrugged and shuffled off, shoving each other and laughing like fourteen year old pre-puberty idiots.

He took a deep breath, shut his eyes, and massaged his temples. He could do this. He only had one more hour and then he would be free for three whole days.

Big Mike tossed him a bunch of vacation days he could take whenever he wanted as a thank you for taking a bullet for the team and going to that conference. It had been a meaningless conference, and to the store manager's credit, he apologized for making him go for nothing and gave him vacation. Was it allowed? Chuck didn't know. He wasn't looking a gift horse in the mouth about it. He was taking some days off and giving himself a bit of separation from this place.

Hopefully he'd make it to four o'clock without having a stress stroke or an aneurism or something. He thought sending Jeff and Lester away might ease things.

Granted, that meant he'd have to take care of all of the devices people had left for the Nerd Herd to fix. It was a sacrifice he'd gladly make if it meant working in peace for a little while.

Sliding back behind his desk, he began repairing a Galaxy phone, doing his best not to let any melancholy sneak into his thoughts. Instead, like a mantra, his brain reminded him of his three days of vacation. Just one hour. He could get through the next hour.

But the repetitive monotonous task of fixing phone after phone after phone started to get to him, and he eventually had to put it all down, laying his arm on the Nerd Herd desk and dropping his forehead onto it. He took a deep breath, let it out, and droned, "I'm losing my mind, I'm losing my mind, I'm losing my mind…"

He heard the frustrating ding of the customer service bell right near his ear. God damn, he couldn't even put his head down for a second. And as much as he loved his best friend more than pretty much almost everybody, he wasn't in the mood to listen to his woes about how nobody wanted to buy things from him because of his height.

"Morgannnn? Not now," he drawled slowly, reaching over with his free hand and draping it over the hand that was still covering the bell.

The back of the hand was smooth, though, the fingers long with manicured nails, they weren't stubby and covered with hair… He slipped his hand around it, feeling it for a moment, and then lifted his head to look. It was a female hand, one hundred percent, and as he followed the arm up to her face, he sat back, his jaw falling open.

And then he surged up to stand at his full height, just gaping, wide-eyed.

A tentative grin swept over her face and he was struck again with just how endlessly beautiful she was. It was like a punch to his gut.

He thought he'd never see her again.

"Hi," she said quietly, biting her lip, as if unsure. But her blue eyes he hadn't stopped thinking about for four weeks straight were still so warm and bright.

"Hi," he breathed. He beamed at her. "Oh my God, hi. I-I mean, you're...here. You're here. Hi."

She smiled again and nodded. "Yeah. I am."

"What are ya—I mean, how are you?"

"I'm good." She took a deep breath. "Pretty good. You?"

"How do I even answer that when my tongue is tied up in knots at seeing you again? That's-That's how I am." He shook himself. "That is to say, I'm really, really good. At this particular moment."

How was she even here? What had he done to deserve this? What did he do now? How did he even proceed?

"So. This is where you work." She looked around at everything.

"Uh, yeah. Yeah, this is it." He was at a loss. Everything felt numb and his heart was racing. Because four weeks ago, he'd gotten stranded in Chicago, pushed into a motel room with a stranger, and over the course of the next twenty-four hours, he'd fallen in love with her, only to let her walk away again at the airport in Miami. And a massive part of him had regretted not pursuing something, getting her phone number, an email address, friending her on some social media thing. He'd tried googling her. He'd tried searching "Sarah Walker" on every social media platform that existed. But there were billions of Sarah Walkers out there. And he knew nothing about her to go off of.

And then all of a sudden, she showed up here, in Burbank, at the Buy More.

Like a freaking godsend.

He wondered if she could see it in his face, that he was fully wrecked by her appearing out of the blue like this, wrecked in the best possible way. That he wasn't sure how his legs were even working anymore because he couldn't feel them.

"You look really good," he muttered dreamily, swallowing hard.

She turned back to him and smiled, that warm smile he remembered her giving him that night four weeks ago, after she'd seemed to become more talkative, more comfortable with the situation.

"Thank you." She flicked her gaze down his torso and back up again, smiling harder. "So do you."

He snorted and looked down at his Nerd Herd uniform. "The pocket protector doin' somethin' for ya?"

"Maybe it is," she said immediately, her voice as smooth as warm butter.

God. He was glad the desk was here and he could hold onto it, because otherwise, he thought he might faint. She had a way of throwing him off completely. Off what? Off everything.

She cleared her throat when he didn't respond and shifted her weight, leaning in closer, before looking around again as if to make sure nobody was watching or listening. Then she met his gaze seriously. "When are you going to be done here? Because...I need to talk to you."

Chuck glanced down at his watch. Twenty-eight minutes until four. There was no way he was standing here for the next twenty-eight minutes knowing she was here, in his city, this close, and he wasn't with her. He'd go insane first.

"Fuck it," he breathed, stepping to the side and bracing his palms on the desk, swinging himself over it to land beside her. "Right now," he said as she looked up at him with wide eyes, amusement tilting a corner of her mouth.

Her eyes flicked over to the side and her brow furrowed in question. As overwhelmed and filled with adrenaline as he was, he caught the look and followed her gaze to see that Jeff and Lester were standing about twelve feet away, just staring at the scene, completely dumbstruck, emphasis on the dumb.

"Going home early," Chuck chirped, because he was absolutely out of fucks to give. "Jeff, you're in charge. Don't burn anything down, 'kay?"

He grabbed Sarah Walker's hand and walked down the aisle towards the Buy More main exit.

"Can't make any promises," Jeff said in his usual drugged-out drawl.

"Cool, I don't care!" Chuck called, not even looking back as a highly confused Sarah Walker just let herself get pulled along with him.

}o{

Somehow she'd managed to tighten his tie rather than loosening it while trying to get it off, and she felt bad about the choking sound he made as a result. "Sorry," she panted against his lips, pulling back just enough to look down and actually watch what she was doing.

It had all been a blur.

She'd seen him there at the desk, his hair unmistakable as he rested his forehead on his arm. Everything in her came alive as she'd approached, and when she announced herself, when he looked at her finally, she'd seen everything she'd felt all day while traveling to Burbank flash across his face.

They'd left the Buy More behind, climbed into her rental car, and now they were in her hotel room. In spite of everything she needed to talk to him about, the moment the door closed behind them, they'd pounced at each other.

They'd talk later.

At the moment, she had no intention of setting this fire between them aside.

Instead, she tossed his tie and his shirt aside. She heard the clunk of everything in his pocket protector hit the floor of her hotel room and she winced a little but he didn't seem to care as he unbuttoned her skirt and pushed it down to land around her ankles.

She giggled into his lips and stepped out of it, also stepping out of her heels, and leaping up into his arms. She rounded his waist with her legs, her hands braced on his shoulders. She giggled even harder when he grinned and dove in to kiss her neck, walking her to the bed and laying her down onto it. He crawled over her and gathered her up in his embrace, just holding her and kissing her.

And as she shoved her hands between them to unbuckle his belt and undo his pants, trying to get the show on the road, she let her mind drift back to four weeks earlier. She'd woken up late that morning, her limbs tangled with his, feeling both insanely sated and exhausted, but also filled with unending light. They'd been able to keep things from being awkward, eating breakfast together at a nearby café, traveling to the airport together, sitting beside one another for a three hour flight that she'd allowed herself not just to fall asleep on, but she'd also woken up near the end of the flight with her head on his shoulder. It wasn't until late that night as she sat in her hotel room, alone, planning for her assignment, that she'd thought about the time she had wasted sleeping instead of talking to him or just...being with him even in silence. Especially when they would part eventually at the airport in Miami.

She'd blocked thoughts of him as much as she could while she completed her assignment. And she'd continued blocking thoughts of him when she'd gotten back to Langley and debriefed with Director Graham.

But then it had all come rushing back to her as she stepped out into the hallway outside of Graham's office. And she'd ducked back in, asking him if she could have a few weeks of R&R. He'd seemed surprised by that, and she couldn't blame him for it. She hated R&R and he knew that. She preferred to dive into the next mission the moment the last one ended. It was how she operated. But he had granted her some leave, saying she deserved it.

And she'd gotten on a plane to Burbank's little airport the next day.

And now, seven hours later, she was pushing Chuck Bartowski's pants down to his ankles, trying in vain to get them off of him because of his stupid canvas sneakers he was still wearing, damn it.

"Shoes," she panted. "Take off the shoes."

"Right, right. Right. Shoes. Got 'em." He rolled off of her, sat up, and untied his shoes with shaking hands, his movements jerky and desperate.

She didn't know where she went from here. That was why she'd wanted to find him immediately and just...gauge how things went, talk things out with him. Figure out if this could… Well, it could.

As he tossed his shoes, socks, and pants away and draped himself back over her body, she knew beyond all doubt that it could and would. That was, if he didn't sprint out of the door screaming first.

Talk.

She inwardly scoffed. She should've known better. After the explosion of seeing one another again, the memory of the physical and emotional intimacy from that night four weeks ago, and the ache from walking away from it, they weren't going to talk first.

This was first.

And the moment they joined, the intensity was there. It didn't stop for some time. Neither did they.

She shook above him, throwing her head back with his name on her lips, and she distantly felt his arms wrap around her, her body tilting to the side and ending up on the mattress. When she was able to breathe properly again and had some semblance of control over her senses, she clung hard to him, her lips pressed to his shoulder. She finally blinked her eyes open.

The sun was almost completely set outside of her window, the dusk light still coming in through the open drapes. She let a languorous smile stretch over her face and a happy, breathless giggle bubbled up from her chest. A little embarrassed by it, she turned her face into his jaw and just beamed.

"Y'okay?" he asked, still breathing hard himself. His long, warm fingers moved against her back almost as if he was giving her a slow massage and it was the most comforting, reassuring thing she'd ever felt in her almost twenty-seven years of life.

"Yeah," she said, still grinning. She hugged him hard, letting her eyes drift shut again. "I've never been this okay in my entire life." That was the truest sentence she'd ever uttered perhaps.

She slid her hand up to rest on the back of his head, let her finger comb through his hair at the nape of his neck, and pressed her lips to his jaw.

"Me, neither," was his reply.

And she found she was infinitely glad she'd blocked that common sense voice in her head, the one that constantly told her to stay in the shadows, that she didn't deserve anything good. This was everything good and she wanted it, whether she deserved it or not.

She felt his body go tense against hers then, and he pulled back a bit, just enough to be able to look her in the eye. Confusion was in his brown eyes, in his furrowed brow. "What?" she whispered, stroking her thumb over the spot right under his ear.

"How did you find out where I live? I-I mean where I work? How'd you even find me?"

And so… The so-called honeymoon phase was at an end, wasn't it?

She had meant for this to be the first order of business, and then...well, things happened, one thing led to another. Maybe she'd gotten greedy, selfish.

This was what she'd wanted to tell him right away when she got to Burbank.

She could only hope this wouldn't be the end.

"Um. Right. About that…" She licked her lips and met his quizzical look with a steady one of her own. "There's something I need to tell you, Chuck. And when I tell you this, I need you to…" She sighed, steeling herself. "Well. Just… Don't freak out."

A/N: Boop! The end.

Thanks again for popping in and appreciating this short fic. I'd love it if you'd take the time to review. See you folks on my other stories.

-SC