Nate carefully inserted the key card into the slot on their hotel room door and waited until the little light on the handle turned green and he heard the click! of the electronic deadbolt unlocking. Opening the door with his right hand, he stepped inside, while his left hand remained firmly clasped on both of Elena's hands. She was currently hanging from his shoulders, her legs wrapped around his waist, similar to how a small child might ride on their parent's back, and giggling like a small child as well. Nate swaggered into the room and then slung her around, dumping her playfully onto the couch. With a huge smile plastered on his face, he leaned forward, pinning her with one arm on either side of her, until his face was mere inches from hers, as she continued to shake with silent laughter.

"Well," he began in a mock authoritative voice, "did the tired little girl make it home okay? Too tired to even walk in from the parking lot?"

"Stop it!" Elena said through her laughter.

"Do you need another three cups of coffee delivered to you so you can make it off the couch, there? I know just the guy to do it for you." Nate stood and walked over to the kitchen, dropping his backpack in the recliner on the way, and flipped the switch on the coffee maker. The little machine began to gurgle and hum as he turned to the fridge and opened the door. "I know one thing," he said, reverting to his normal tone of voice, "this is one hungry treasure hunter." He dug in the fridge while muttering to himself, "Will the gallant Nathan Drake prepare pancakes for his lovely wife Elena Fisher? Eggs Benedict?"

"Oh, please." Elena rolled her eyes, still laying on the couch where he left her.

"Or even more likely," Nate continued his third person monologue, "will he just make cereal and milk?" He emerged with a half gallon carton bearing witness to his decision. "I think, today, I'll stick to my strengths."

"Probably better that way," Elena smiled as he pulled out a box of raisin bran. "Don't need the smoke alarm going off right now."

"Hey now, that was one time, and it wasn't that big a deal," Nate said as he began to cross the room with two full bowls of cereal.

"The fire department got called, Nate," Elena continued to chaff him.

"...because the hotel fire alarms couldn't be shut off any other way." Nate had reached the table and had his back to her. "Dumb design, really." He began to carefully set the bowls down until they were about an inch off the table when he suddenly felt fingers jabbing him in the ribs. He yelped and dropped the bowls, sloshing some of their contents onto the table as Elena began to tickle him. "Hey! Not fair!" he whined. But her attacks only became more vicious, and soon she had forced Nate to the floor in a fit of uncontrollable laughter, the two of them rolling on the ground as Nate tried to extricate himself. Eventually he managed to start tickling her back and even managed to roll away from her, only for her to pounce on him again. As he once more dissolved into a fit of breathless giggling, Elena suddenly stopped and kissed him passionately, then pinned him to the carpet as their lips met with burning desire. Nate's defense slowly lowered as he abandoned himself more and more to the sultry moans coming from his wife, and he began to return the kiss with equal fervor. His hands slowly moved downward to grab the hem of her shirt. Grasping the thin fabric, he tugged on it, inching it upward as Elena wriggled in approval.

Just as her belly became exposed, the silence in the hotel room was shattered, the serenity of the moment ripped in half by an awful, grating noise. It was Nate's phone. Elena uttered an agonized groan. She opened her mouth to say something, but Nate, pushing himself up with one hand, pressed the other one downward in the air, palm flat, in a pacifying gesture. The obnoxious ringtone continued to blare as he walked to the recliner and unzipped the front pocket on his backpack. He pulled out his phone and flipped it open.

"Y'ello."

"Nate! Hey kid, how's it going?" Sully's gruff voice greeted him.

"Uh, great..." Nate said unconvincingly. "...yeah, how's it going, Sully?" Nate ignored Elena's eye roll as his old friend began talking again.

"'nother day in paradise," Sully drawled through the phone. "How's Greece? I hear it's lovely this time of year."

Nate shrugged. "Yeah, it's great. I dunno..."

"Hey, Nate, I know you're kinda halfway on vacation and all- you know, you and Elena-"

"Right," Nate interrupted more curtly then he intended.

Picking up on his tone, Sully paused. "Did I...interrupt something?"

Nate sighed, scrubbing a hand over his face and up through his hair. "You know what? Don't worry about it. What's up?"

"I'm gonna pretend like that's not awkward," Sully muttered under his breath before continuing. "I got a job, Nate. You're gonna love it. It's nearby you-"

"Nope," Nate cut him off. "No. Uh-uh. Not gonna do it." He answered his wife's quizzical look by silently holding up a finger and then stepping out onto the balcony for some privacy. Gently shutting the glass sliding door behind him, he continued more quietly, "I can't, Sully. I promised her this would be a quiet, scenic trip to Greece. We'd get the artifact, go visit Athens, and go home."

"Nate-"

"-no business deals, and NO guns," Nate forged ahead, disregarding Sully's protests.

"I understand all that, kid, but there's virtually no chance of this job going sour," Sully insisted.

"Ugh, you- you said it!" Nate exclaimed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"What?" Sully asked, confused.

Nate leaned on the wrought iron railing of the balcony. "It's just that any time we say that there's no chance a job will go bad, someone inevitably comes at us with a machine gun, and it all goes south from there."

"Point taken," Sully said patiently, "but listen. All we're doing is lifting an old journal from the house of some old kook in Crete. Guy's probably too ancient to even lift a gun if he wanted to, and I promise he doesn't own an army. Customer's willing to pay twenty thousand for it Nate," Sully added with emphasis. "In case you need help with your math facts that'd be ten grand for you." His voice became softer as he went on, "Nate, I know you've been trying to get a decent house for you and the girl. Hell, I'd just give you half the money regardless, but I know you're a stubborn mule who won't take anything unless you feel like you've earned it. So just do yourself a favor and come meet me in Athens when I fly in tomorrow, okay? You don't have to agree to anything right now, we'll just meet up and I'll explain the details."

Nate waited, then took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "Sure, Sully. I'll be there." He hung up the phone but stayed leaning on the rail, gazing absently out at the green rolling hills crowded with white stucco houses. After a minute he got up and walked inside.

"Elena?" he called into the empty living room. Silence answered him. "Elena?" He wandered through the kitchen and towards the bedroom of the suite. Opening the door quietly, he leaned in and looked around the darkened room. Funny, he thought, I don't remember drawing the shades. He stepped inside, flicking the light on as he did.

Suddenly, a hand grabbed his shirt, and he let out a startled cry. Before he could even react Elena had pulled him down onto the bed with her in a tangle of sheets and clothes.

The next day, at about one o'clock p.m., Nate was sitting with Sully at an outdoor table belonging to a quaint little cafe in Athens. Elena had opted to stay behind to work on her application for a new position she was hoping to snag under the condition that Nate wouldn't go on any swash-buckling adventures without letting her know first, so he came by himself. The stream of people flooding by their little table was constant, as was the loud jabber of both the pedestrians and the other patrons of the cafe, making it an ideal place for a "hidden in plain sight" kind of semi-private talk about the new job. Nate leaned forward on the table, his hands clasped around his mug of coffee.

"Alright, Sully. Spill."

"Ahh, a little antsy, are we?" Sully asked playfully as he added some creamer to his joe and stirred it in. "Your little trip with Elena has you in a 'get to the climax' kind of mood, Nate. Especially yesterday."

Nate rolled his eyes but couldn't quite resist a smile. "No, I'm just afraid if we sit here too long, you might spend your entire share of the money right here before you even get it."

"Who knew a little hole-in-the-wall place would be so expensive?" Sully mumbled in agreement. "Can't imagine how they justify it."

Just then their waitress arrived with a plate of kabobs for each of them. Sully looked up at the attractive young woman as she set his plate down in front of him, his eyes settling on the neckline of her shirt as she bent over slightly to place the dish. As the girl straightened up to leave, Sully's eyes flicked up to hers, and she smiled coyly at him as the two men nodded their thanks. The waitress walked away with a bit of an exaggerated sway of her hips, and Sully muttered to himself, "Then again, maybe that's how." He yelped as Nate bounced an olive off his ear, the little projectile rolling away onto the sidewalk to be squished under foot as Sully looked at his protege with wounded pride.

"D'ya think we could try focusing just a little?" Nate jabbed.

"Right, right. The job." Sully picked up one of his skewers and slid a piece of lamb off the end using his teeth, then chewed the tender meat thoughtfully. "Alright, so you know Isaac Newton? Scientist who developed the law of gravity when an apple cracked his cranium?"

"Sully," Nate sighed, resisting the urge to point out that he was the historian in this partnership. "I know who Isaac Newton is. Also, that apple story is a little apocryphal."

"Hey, just throw me a bone, kid," Sully said. "I'm relishing being the guy to explain the historical basis of one of our little escapades for once."

Leaning back in his chair, Nate smiled a crooked smile and waved his hand for the old man to continue.

"Anyway, guy's famous for all his scientific theories and all that, but his real interest-"

"Alchemy."

"-was alchemy." Sully paused to glare at Nate for his unwarranted interruption of his monologue.

Nate smirked and held up his hands. "Sorry."

Sully maintained a stink eye directed at Nate while pointedly grabbing a skewered hunk of cheese with his teeth and sliding it off into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed, then continued. "Anyway, some of Newton's works on alchemy are published, but a good deal of them have never been found and identified. My client believes that one of his alchemy journals is in the possession of a Greek collector named Milos Adamos." He tossed a manila file folder onto the table between them. "These are pictures of Milos' villa on Crete."

Nate picked up the file with a raise of his eyebrows and glanced between it and his mentor. Noticing Nate's quizzical and slightly bemused look, Sully turned his hands up. "What?"

"A file?" Nate asked as he opened the folder and began to flip through its contents. "You're really doin' it up, Sullivan."

"I try." Sully twisted at an angle in his chair, draping one arm over the back, then took a cigar from the pocket of his green Havana shirt and placed it between his lips. Opening his Zippo with a soft click, he cupped his hand around the flame and held it to the end of the cigar.

Nate pored over the photos of Adamos' villa: the gravel road leading up to it, the garden off to the right of the main entrance, the trellis over the courtyard out back, the large, free-form pool...

"See that window there?" Sully's voice broke Nate out of his thoughts. "That's the south approach. Based on those architectural drawings I found and put at the back, I think that window that all those vines are growing up around leads to the study. I'm thinking that's our most direct route in and out of the place. The journal's likely to be just inside."

Nate flipped to the drawings in question. His mind running through every possible outcome he could think of, he drew a sharp breath and leaned back. "Looks solid," he admitted. "You're sure this collector guy isn't dangerous?"

Sully puffed out a cloud of smoke. "He's an eighty-something year old historian who lives by himself with his grounds keeper. No trouble there."

"And your client?" Nate pressed.

"A French scientist by the name of Mathis Garnier. Medium stature, slight build, and more likely to give us a manicure than a bullet to the brain."

Nate remained skeptical. "Really? We've been double-crossed by some real pencil-pushers..."

"Nate," Sully said, "I promise. This guy's got as much potential to double-cross as a North Dakota highway."

Nate looked confused. "What- does that mean?"

Sully raised one eyebrow. "You ever been to North Dakota?"

"No."

"Try it sometime. You'll find out." The old man leaned in. "Listen, kid. I'm not trying to pressure you into this. Really. But I know you need the money. It might make your wife's year." He sat back and dragged on his cigar. Nate chewed a piece of lamb meat, his mind still swirling with thoughts, not the least of which was that it might also make his wife's year if he was actually there at home with her for a little bit. But it should be a quick job, and it really would be an incredible payment towards a decent house...

Nate turned his palms up. "Ah, what the heck? I'm in."

Sully grinned broadly. "Attaboy!" He reached across the table and clapped a hand on Nate's shoulder. "I knew you'd warm up to the idea." After throwing back the rest of his cup of coffee, he began to explain the logistics of the mission and their trip to Crete, while Nate listened with growing enthusiasm as he finally allowed his mind to settle into the task at hand.