This is set after Chuck vs The Colonel, but it's AU based on what happened in Chuck vs The Ring. In other words, in this story, that last scene of Season 2 didn't happen.

Chuck wakes up the morning after the wedding with a smile on his face. Sarah is mostly naked and cuddled against his side. The sun is out. His sister is now Mrs. Awesome, and is on her way to Tahiti, which means he and Sarah can loudly make out on the couch without enduring Awesome's encouraging grins or Ellie's suggestion that the four of them play a board game. His plan for the rest of the week involves memorizing every inch of Sarah's skin, somehow sating this appetite that seems to grow with every moment they spend in contact with each other. He can't imagine ever having enough of her. As he gazes at her, her lips purse a little, her shoulder nudging his pillow, and he leans down until his mouth is almost touching hers.

Ellie's supposed to be in Tahiti, but he's so used to hearing her voice in the morning that he only just realizes he's been hearing it for a good thirty seconds, muffled through his bedroom door. Making a face, he eases carefully out of bed, finds his jeans and sidles into the hallway.

"Hey... guys?"

His head is still a little muzzy from the champagne, but not this muzzy. Ellie's in something pastel and tropical, the colors bright against her wedding-day tan, but she looks exasperated, and Devon—

"Come on, Chuck, you understand." Devon flashes a pleading you-owe-me look at Chuck.

"Understand what? Why aren't you two in Tahiti right now?"

Devon's expression falls a little, and Ellie sucks in a lungful of air, preparing for either a five-minute stream of ear-burning epithets or a seriously pissed-off scream. "Because of that!" she spits, punctuating her scathing indictment with the jabbed point of one French-tipped nail.

"That?" A shabby RV, small and at least twenty years old, is parked crookedly beside Casey's Crown Vic, just within sight from their apartment. And then Chuck realizes that this is real, this is life, not the rarified spy-chase existence has been for almost two years, and he doesn't usually see Winnebagos straight out of Escape to Witch Mountain parked in Burbank.

"One of my frat buddies needed some cash so he sold me his Winnebago last night," Devon says, and before he realizes it Chuck is nodding along with the logic, until he sees the searing glare on Ellie's face. "Isn't it so—"

"Ridiculous?!" Ellie interrupts. "Devon, that was money for our honeymoon."

"I know, babe, but—"

"There are no buts here! At our wedding reception?! What kind of 'buddy' would hit you up for cash at your own wedding?" Ellie's throwing in air quotes. If Chuck doesn't do something soon, she's going to go nuclear, incinerate the entire complex in one searing flash.

And what he's thinking is crazy, but it just might work.

"Hey, what if... I buy it from you, Awesome? How much did you pay for it? I mean, if you guys really need the money..."

He's accidentally opened their bank statements enough times to know that isn't the case, at all, but Ellie's face softens. "Oh, Chuck, it's not that..."

"That's true, babe, it's not like this is so big a deal—"

"But it is!" She cups Awesome's face in her hands. "We're together now. We have to make decisions together now. And blowing three thousand bucks on a POS RV, is not a decision we would have made."

"Three thousand bucks, huh," Chuck says thoughtfully.

"You can have it for two," Ellie replies, just before Awesome sweeps her up with a thousand murmured apologies and a kiss that's definitely going to escalate quickly.

Which makes him think of Sarah, and a certain future Benihana chef, and a deadline none of them will talk about. The day she'll finally leave.

And that's how, four hours later, they pull out of the parking lot, in a rusty, pollen-streaked Winnebago full of brittle upholstery and mustard-colored shag carpet. Morgan in the passenger seat, in smoked aviator sunglasses, a battered California map spread out on his lap. Anna and Sarah rummaging through the cabinets, Anna audibly wondering whether the scorch marks in the microwave necessarily make it unsafe, Sarah sorting through the knives. John Casey in the driver's seat, slapping Morgan's hand whenever he tries to change the radio station.

And Chuck, with his arms up, fingers laced behind his head, thinking that this wasn't how he had wanted to get to Mexico with Sarah, not quite, but it will do. Two coolers full of beer, three sacks from the liquor store, two leftover bottles of champagne, and two of the skimpiest bikinis he's ever seen that weren't on Jeff.

Chuck's smile widens into a grin, and then Sarah catches his eye and there is no way he can ever be happier.

--

"I don't sing."

"Everyone sings." Anna looks completely unintimidated by the NSA colonel currently trying to stare her down. "And I know just the song for you."

"You know," Sarah murmurs, with her fingers laced in Chuck's and her breath touching his earlobe, "two years ago, I would never have believed this."

They're sitting at a small low table, very close, a bucket of iced beers sweating onto the laminate tabletop, the light from the green tamale-bulb strands catching in her hair. He didn't realize how much he needed to unwind, after everything. He feels like their first date again, except now he knows the only true things she'll ever say are the ones that don't actually carry any weight. That if he pushes, she will only lie.

Her knee nudges his. She looks like she let Anna dress her, or like she's impersonating some naughty Catholic goth schoolgirl.

"You joking? I can't believe it now. Ten bucks says it's 'Sister Golden Hair Surprise.'"

"You're on." She clicks the neck of her beer against his, just as Morgan crowdsurfs by. In a karaoke bar just over the border. Shirtless. With Anna beaming at him.

Casey, on the other side of the room, is shaking his head vehemently, as Anna pouts and flips through the laminated song lists. He feels at the small of his back for the gun that (probably) isn't there and Sarah actually bursts into laughter, and Chuck looks over and their eyes catch.

And just like that his mouth is on hers, the taste of beer sharp on her tongue. She moans and his hand finds the hem of her skirt and she buries her fingers in his hair, brutal, honest. She launches herself off the chair, almost tipping it over, before settling on his lap, and for the barest second he forgets himself and forgets them and wonders who this public display of very obvious affection is meant to distract or cover for.

Then he remembers that it isn't, that this is just them, the way she'd never let him be.

Thank God Casey insisted they get hotel rooms for the night.

--

Casey hasn't exactly stolen the Winnebago. It's only that when Chuck asked where he was going with it, he'd growled for an answer. Sarah just shrugged a little, giving Chuck that momentary hesitation before volunteering that Casey had probably seen someone he recognized and needed to... detain.

And it wasn't that Chuck missed the Intersect, then, it was just that he missed feeling helpful, to whatever small degree. But then, this way, he is able to watch Sarah saunter down the beach in a bikini that definitely leaves no hiding places for knives. Or anything else, for that matter.

"Just think. Soon your days are going to be nothing but this."

Morgan raises a finger, his gaze on Anna as she splashes in the surf. "This, and learning how to make the sacred onion-slice-volcano."

Chuck nods. "Good point. So, of all the many dreams you and I have had over the years, this is the one you're going with?"

"It was this, or substitute male nude model at the community college, and Anna says she's not going to share me."

"Can't say I can top that." His gaze goes back to Sarah, cool and poised in her wide sunglasses, tossing her hair back. At least twenty other male gazes are on her. His girl definitely turns heads.

They swim out past the breakers, after a few too many beers, and the cold raises gooseflesh on his arms. Every time she looks at him, it's like she's memorizing his face, like she's forcing herself to take another step back. He can't stand it.

"You're about to tell me bad news," he says, searching her gaze. "You've heard from CIA. Casey has a hostage situation and you need to go help him out. My sister's plane never made it—"

She puts her thumb over his mouth to quiet him, then wraps her arms around him, derailing that train of thought with a kiss that leaves him reeling and trying to figure out the logistics of having sex in the ocean when his feet aren't even touching the bottom.

"We have to figure out a code," she says, gasping her breath back, her face against his neck. "If... if, after... you want to see me again."

He pulls back to see her face. "You know I do. I would. You know that."

She smiles a little sadly and Chuck knows whatever pain he sees in Sarah's eyes, Bryce put there. That when she goes quiet, her body swaying softly to the rhythm of the waves, she's seeing another long goodbye. That this is somehow, no matter how momentous to him, just another long goodbye.

"You know..." He shakes his head. "Forget it."

"What?"

He struggles with it, running a wet hand through the tangled mass of his curls. "I don't want to ask you because I don't want to know," he mumbles. "Because I've seen you and this is what you were cut out for, Jenny Burton."

"You haven't been half-bad yourself."

And they just gaze at each other, not saying it, daring in their silence to meet halfway, until he can't take it anymore and dunks her under the water. When she finally resurfaces, spluttering and squealing, he's swimming as fast as he can away from her, until she grabs his ankle and tugs and they end up wrestling, until it definitely isn't wrestling, and Sarah's bikini top is nowhere to be found when they make it back to shore.

The look in Casey's eyes when he sees that is at once priceless and utterly insufferable.

"All right, kids, Uncle John's grilling the brats."

--

Chuck practices the chalk symbols with the brush of a fingertip over Sarah's skin, the symbols for all-clear, wait, now, soon. He practices them with the tip of his tongue against her shoulder. His muscles signal it in morse code as he grips her hips, holding them to his. His heartbeat knows it.

He wakes that last morning with her already on top of him, sweeping her hair out of her face, eyes fluttered closed and lashes dark against her cheeks, lips parted in a harsh gasp of pleasure. He bucks his hips and there's still sand in their bed.

She pants and his fingers count her ribs. He will not let her go. There is no power on this earth that can make him let her go.

She lets out one long breathy moan, and he arches and she collapses to him, and he will wake up every morning for the rest of his life remembering this.

"Everything's just getting good," he whispers, running his fingers through her hair. "You can't leave yet. Everything's just getting so good."

He feels her smile against his neck. "You keep saying that like it wasn't good enough, Chuck, but from the beginning you've always been good enough."

"Just not quite enough..." to change your mind, he can't say. "To keep you in bed all day."

"Try me," she purrs, and it sounds like a challenge.

--

The drive back feels like a death sentence. Morgan demands they stop at the next gas station for chips and beer. Across the street, they see a low red-lit dive, the bass pounding through blacked windows, laughing couples sharing cigarettes as they lean against battered pickups and dust-streaked sedans in the lot.

And Anna has been wanting to try out her new cowboy hat.

It feels like bookends when Sarah dances with him there, in that loud beer-soaked dive, shimmying her body against his, eyes gone half-lidded with desire he can almost believe, now. Casey's busy looking for exit routes and possible weapons. Sarah winks at him and Chuck's sure that the symbols they have been whispering into each others' skin the past five nights have been just another red herring, another promise that will never materialize, because for as long as he keeps holding out hope his heart will never really fully break, will never actually begin to mend.

This was never meant to be. So he rests his hands on her hips as she grinds against him, feeling the barest weight of her hair on his skin, wishing they just had more time, more time.

Then it starts to rain in heavy cold drops and he can't feel miserable when she looks at him. He can't feel sorry for himself when she's right here.

The rain and the beer put Anna and Morgan to sleep, and Casey's listening to something altogether too sedate on the Winnebago's radio when Sarah leads Chuck to the narrow bunk, perched under a window at the back. The upholstery still carries that faint musty plastic smell, so he lays her on a heavy rough blanket, sand still clinging to its fringe, and they make love with most of their clothes on, her fingers twisted in his hair the whole time, her blue eyes staring fiercely up into his.

All the stupid mistakes he's ever made have led to this.

"I love you," he whispers, like it's the first time he's ever said it, like it's the first time he's meant it, but he's meant it every time. He's just never wanted so badly to hear it in return.

She smiles, and it is no answer, but it'll have to be enough.

"Thank you," she whispers instead, shifting her hips to cradle his, and this is real, truly, unforgettably real. Even if it's just been seven days, at least for this long she has been his.

--

A month after she's gone, Chuck does three things, his last day at Buy More: changes all Emmett's passwords to "asshat," puts Tron on all the display televisions, and tosses the Winnebago keys to Jeff and Lester. Jeffster needs a new tour bus, since Jeff accidentally set the last one on fire and rolled it off a cliff.

Twice.

The last postcard from Morgan is mostly incoherent and appears to have been dipped in soy sauce. Chuck knew for a long time before Morgan walked out that, without him, Buy More was just another store, another soulless, soul-sucking store. No amount of alcohol-fueled pantsless Jeff escapades or all-night James Bond marathons in the home theater room can change any of that.

The girl behind the counter at Orange Orange is fresh out of high school and barely glances up from her cell phone, the chipped black polish on her thumbnails a blur as she feverishly texts someone. She shorts him a quarter in change. He can't muster up the energy to complain.

Before her, he had no idea what he was missing. Now he knows and it's no longer an option, not really. He has a little apartment this side of town, the sink full of takeout Chinese boxes and coffee cups. Roark's biggest competitor has hired him starting Monday. Everything's falling into place.

Nothing's falling into place.

Not until he sees the L-shaped mark on a park bench a block away from his apartment, and goes from a dejected walk to a flat-out run in an instant. Not until he hurriedly keys open the door and Sarah throws herself into his arms. His mother's charm bracelet sounds faintly at her wrist.

That's enough to convince him that he's dreaming.

"You're going to be the death of me."

"That's the plan." Her eyes are sparkling wickedly. He's weak-kneed with gratitude and surprise. She was never going to come back. Here she is.

Her face softens; she can read his expression all too well, the pure joy of his surprise. "Not everything's a lie."

His smile is only a little bittersweet. "Just as long as this never is."