A/N The Seduction continues, although who's seducing whom is a topic for debate.
"Anything to report?" asked Anna, as she got into the car.
"I never thought I'd get tired of classic rock but I have," said Rye.
"Good to know. And them?"
"No change," he said with a yawn. "Lights out, no more of that crappy music. Something comes on every few minutes that fuzzes the window but there's nothing to hear."
"Not our job," said Anna, shutting down those monitors, keeping up the motion detectors. "A total biscuit like her in his bed, he's staying put, that's all we care about."
"She could be an assassin, playing a long game," said Rye.
"That kind of thing only happens in movies," said Anna. She picked up his NVGs and fitted them for her own head, and started scanning the grounds. "I'll take over the filthy window-peeping. You take an hour."
Chuck looked nervous, as well he should, having just confessed the existence of a secret to a spy, even if (or especially since) said spy was currently naked in his bed. Sarah, for her part, as the spy in question, decided she didn't like that look on him either. She was making a list. "Is it a Santa's naughty list sort of secret?" she asked lightly.
Chuck blew out a breath, staring at the ceiling. "That would depend," he said, "On which branch of the Federal government you asked."
She frowned, not about to ask. Never had she been so glad to be incommunicado. "Are you saying Santa's a government agent?"
He laughed a bit. "Well, actually, no, but...now that I think about it..."
"Take my word for it, Chuck," said Sarah. "Santa's not a spy. If they could get their hands on him the IRS would have snatched him up years ago."
"Aw, man," Chuck whined, "Now you've just ruined Christmas."
"Have not." Sarah slid up in bed, making sure the sheet came with. "So tell me, who's naughty list would you be on if not his?"
"Hey wait a minute, who said I'd be on any naughty list?" said Chuck, sliding up himself but not making the sheet come with, since there was only one sheet on the bed and she already had. "I just said I had a secret, that's all. I wasn't expecting some sort of Spanish Inquisition."
"Nobody does," said Sarah. Chuck looked disappointed, and she added it to the list. "What?"
"Nothing," said Chuck. "So why did you automatically go for the naughty?"
"Ellie sort of made it obvious," said Sarah. "Every time Morgan talked about how skilled you were, Ellie shut him down. And she said 'lately', which implies a 'previously'. And you looked nervous about it, so now you've got me wondering what you could have done that would make you nervous to confess, yet be consistent with your amply demonstrated virtuous nature."
"Wow." He looked at her in awe. "All that on one breath?"
"There are a lot of things I can do without needing to take a breath," said Sarah, snuggling in. "You'll enjoy some of them."
"Hahm," said Chuck, staring at nothing, or perhaps everything. "Hahm na."
"What's the matter, Chuck?," said Sarah innocently, "Don't you know how to swim?"
Chuck collapsed back against the bed. "Evil woman."
Sarah drew a finger across his chest. "Don't go blaming me for your lecherous imaginings."
"Can't help it," said Chuck. "Ladies' swimwear is inherently lecherous, men design it that way. Bikini or one-piece-" he waved a hand negligently "-equally bad."
She dug in a fingernail. "Bad?"
"Did I say bad?" He laughed weakly. "I meant good, but in a bad way."
"Uh-huh," said Sarah. "So what did you do that was bad, but in a good way? Previously."
"I, uh, I showed people how bad their computer security was?"
"Are you asking me or telling me?" asked Sarah, keeping her voice level.
"Telling you."
"Okay," said Sarah, her tone utterly neutral. "Were you asked to perform this service, or paid for it?"
"No."
She grip a clump of his chest hairs and pulled, making him gasp. "Well now, that's just stupid. They pay big bucks for that sort of thing." She looked thoughtful, as she let go. "When was this?"
"Years and years ago," said Chuck, smoothing out his chest hairs before they started making funny animal shapes. Ellie hated that on his head, and he doubted a change in location would matter to her. "Pre-Jill. You might say she and Bryce put the kibosh on that-"
"Bryce?" asked Sarah, sitting up straight and forgetting about the damn sheet. "Bryce Larkin?"
"Huh." Chuck, recently rendered at least partially immune, lifted the sheet up decorously, and raised one of her hands, placing it against her chest to hold the sheet in place. "What are the odds of that, you and me both knowing the same Bryce? Maybe there's only one. You don't know him."
"No," said Sarah. "Heard of him. He works in the Director's office, his right hand man, and sometimes his left."
Chuck smirked. "He always was good with his hands. Or so I've been told."
"How did you know I'd never met him?"
"Well, it stands to reason, doesn't it? You were in deep cover in Hungary. He would have found you if it wasn't for that." Then Chuck looked confused. "So what was he doing out here this morning?" He checked his phone. "Yesterday morning. They run out of women on the East Coast?"
Sarah, already sitting up, didn't lose her sheet a second time. "Bryce Larkin was in LA?"
Chuck nodded. "He was at the airport. I sort of...bumped into him, just before I met you."
"Bumped into him?" said Sarah. "I don't think so. He wouldn't have been here for no reason and I doubt running into you was an accident."
"I ran into him, really. Tripped over some girl's foot." He made a gesture with his hands, like one person head-butting another. He was really good with his hands. Sarah knew this for a fact.
She wasn't thinking about that now, though. "Asian woman?"
Pause. "I guess."
"She's one of his, her and her partner. They're the ones who've been watching over you all day."
"For Bryce?"
"For the Director, through Bryce," she corrected him. "So why would she trip you?"
"I'm not sure she did, really, " said Chuck. "I'm a bit of a klutz, just ask anybody and especially Ellie, and I was focused on Bryce at the time. Maybe she just had big feet."
Sarah thought about that as much as it deserved to be thought about. "Did he say anything, do anything? Give you anything?"
Chuck thought back. "Um...he said 'Hi, Chuck', 'ah', and 'ow'."
No way Chuck would have picked a fight, and no way Bryce would have lost to him. "'Ah' and 'ow'?"
"It might have been 'ow' and 'ah', I'm kind of hazy on that. We were banging our heads together at the time." Chuck smacked his hands together a few times, as an illustration.
"Right," said Sarah, remembering her first sight of him. "The, um, pills."
"I had a headache."
"Understood. I crushed a couple after you left, sorry, but they had this guy right there, I mean he was johnny-on-the-spot. They really take floor care seriously." She got a thoughtful expression on her face. "Except that he had a mop when I would have a thought a broom would be the superior maintenance tool."
"I'm sure he had his reasons."
"Probably," said Sarah. "What do I know about being a janitor? That's usually a male cover, cleaning up all the slobber the marks drool around us..."
"No, I meant Bryce. I'm sure he had his reasons for being in LA." He got a thoughtful expression on his face. "Hmm. Nothing said, or done. Given? Let me see." He started patting his chest, before remembering he was naked, and got out of bed to gather his clothes.
"Amazing," said Sarah, moving over to watch him do it.
"What?" asked Chuck, until he noticed where she was looking. He stood up quickly, holding his clothes in front of him.
"A bed with a naked me in it and you got out," said Sarah. She pulled back the covers, leaving the bed and her completely exposed. So he could get back in, of course. "You're an incredible man, Chuck Bartowski."
Chuck hopped back into bed, because not stupid. "Only for a moment."
"Doesn't matter," said Sarah, folding the covers back over them both. "I've known international terrorists, criminal overlords, and oligarchs who couldn't do as much, even when the naked me was just a promise and a figment."
"You mean the shiny, glowy, cruel-promise you?" asked Chuck, pointing to the door. "I couldn't have walked away from that either."
"They had the shiny promise, you have the reality," said Sarah, stretching under the sheet. "I think they balance out."
Chuck let his hands run over Sarah's form, but only because he was smoothing out the blankets she happened to be under, and put his clothes on top. From his pockets he retrieved his wallet, house keys, a number of coins, and scraps of paper. He checked each one under the light from his phone, seeing nothing but diagrams on them that he'd put there himself. "Sorry." He smoothed out the papers and set them to one side for later. "You can take the man out of the Electrical Engineering department, especially if your name is Bryce Larkin, but you can't get the EE out of the man."
"Your major?"
"One of them, along with computers."
"Until Bryce...?"
"Yes, until Bryce." Who had at least not put anything in Chuck's pockets, either. He shoved his clothes off the bed.
"I meant, until Bryce what? I doubt sleeping with your girlfriend was part of whatever got you drummed out of the department. What else did he do?"
"Damned if I know. It was only ever scuttlebutt, no proof. Him being CIA does put a new spin on things." He pulled one knee up and draped his arm over it, contemplating the new spin.
"What things, Chuck?"
"Hm? Oh! Well, um, not sleeping with Jill, I suppose-James Bond to the contrary notwithstanding-but a piece of code with my name on it found in a sensitive location seems a likely suspect."
"Assuming you didn't leave it there."
"I thought it was implied that I'm a good person."
"More than implied," said Sarah. "Demonstrated repeatedly, I'd say. Stanford kicked you out over that?"
"No, not at all. We had a student council meeting about it-had to-and everybody from the Dean to the janitor testified to my innate good character, even Bryce, who was suddenly acing all his courses. Not to mention it was old code."
"Stolen?"
"My code?" Chuck sounded amused. "Nobody steals my code, but I may have loaned it out unwisely. Stanford had no case, but the scholarship didn't need one, and bailed on me. It's taken me this long just to pay back that one damn semester. Stanford's expensive and fixing phones doesn't pay well."
She bumped shoulders with him. "Fortunately you were independently wealthy from all your white-hat security testing over the years."
He rolled over and put a finger against her lips. "Shhh."
"Don't shush me," said Sarah, grabbing the finger, but then she pulled back and let it go. "Why are you shushing me?"
"You don't think I can afford this palatial space fixing phones at the Buy More do you? Ellie thinks I supplement my income offering computer lessons to small children."
Sarah smiled, remembering her little role-play. "And do you?"
"Not really," said Chuck. "I mean I do give lessons, but I give all that money away, so no, no income supplementing on that front."
He said he had a secret. "There are other fronts?"
"Have you ever heard of Fishkiller Enterprises?"
"No."
"Good. Neither has Ellie and I'd rather it stayed that way."
Later, up in the penthouse...
"Here we go," sighed Gruber. "More fun and games again."
Decker came back into the room after getting another cup of coffee. "How many times have these two gone at it so far?"
"Three, sir."
Decker gave Gruber the stink eye. "I thought you said it would take him hours to fix that damned TV."
"It should have," said Gruber. "It took me longer to break it. How was I to know that he was some kind of savant?"
"And you," snapped Decker at Thing. "Getting her that stupid game. I'll be hearing that music in my head for days now."
They all would. "Yes, sir."
"Where the hell is Bartowski?" snapped Decker. "This call was supposed to go to him, or have I mistaken my own orders?"
"She did ask for him by name," said Tommy.
"So why didn't he show. What made him change?"
"A hot babe in his bedroom?" suggested Tommy, as per Laszlo's last report.
Vincent shook his head. "It's unprofessional."
"Vincent's right," said Decker. "No way Bartowski would let an underling walk into a possible situation alone. He's either got a team outside right now, watching us, or-"
"Or he never got the call," finished Gruber.
"Bingo," said Decker. "Cut this guy loose. Sasha's milked him for all he was worth and it wasn't that much."
"Thank God," said Tommy, turning to give Sasha the new instructions.
"What about Bartowski?" asked Vincent.
"Shaw gave us twenty-four hours, and they're almost up. We'll have to play hardball. Alert Laszlo, tell him to get ready. We're going to take Mr. Bartowski on a trip into the desert."
A/N2 Sarah was the dramatic heart of the show, so it was nice to let her be a bit more playful here.
I read so many stories about the cheating and whatnot, and I took some notes. I don't claim that they were good notes, but fortunately this story is so AU it doesn't matter.
So many movie scenes playing in my head while I was writing this. Practically every chapter I've ever written dredged up up scenes from movies, TV shows, song lyrics, etc., but this one worked overtime.
LOLs and comments below, please.
