This was my idea of how Tyler came to know about his parents being spies.
All mistakes are my own, as I don't own Chuck, just a tweet from Robert Duncan McNeil.
Toes in the Sand- Chapter 6
"Ok you two, it's time for lights out." Sarah stood leaning on the frame of the door, during the majority of the story, but only interrupted when her boys were too unruly for quiet time.
Tyler pouted. "But moooooommmm," he whined, "The Nerd needs to save the Ninja Princess from Shaver Shaw McGraw. He's holding her captive in Paris."
"Oh no!" Sarah put her hand to her heart in shock. "How is he ever going to do that?"
"By using his super nerd powers of Flash Drive and Bios Boost to push him over the bridge and swooping in and saving her," he replied, without missing a beat.
"Of course! How could I have ever forgotten that?" Sarah grinned at her son as she bent down to kiss him goodnight. "Sleep well, my little man."
"Love you, mom and dad." Tyler pulled the covers up over himself as Chuck and Sarah turned around and heading out of his bedroom, telling him that they loved him as well.
The bedtime story was a nightly routine for the Bartowski family and Tyler excitedly looked forward to 'The Adventures of the Ninja Princess and the Nerd', as told expertly by his own father. In these stories were spies and treasure maps, pirates and bounty. Chuck would sit on the end of Tyler's bed and act out the story that he had planned for that night; his antics leaving Tyler in a fit of giggles until Sarah had to be the big bad wolf and settle them both down for bed. It had been like that since the start of the bedtime stories when Tyler was three years old. Now at almost seven, he knew all the stories off by heart and would correct his father if he got the details wrong.
Heading into their room, Sarah turned to her husband and asked, "Have you ever thought about writing those stories you tell him down? They would make pretty cool books for kids."
Chuck threw on some pyjama pants, took off his shirt and flopped, stomach first, on the bed, ogling his wife as she found her favourite shirt and slipped it on over her naked body.
"Chuck! Did you hear what I said?" Sarah stood in front of him, hands on her hips.
Snapping out of his daze, he looked up at her, giving her the Bartowski smile. "Sorry, I was just appreciating the view. What did you say?"
She rolled her eyes at him, "Nothing really, I was just wondering if you ever considered publishing the stories you tell Tyler."
"Our spy stories that I Marvel up so that they're semi-child friendly?"
"Yeah. They'd be great."
Chuck reached up and took a hold of Sarah before sat back and leant against the headboard, pulling her with him and holding her against his chest.
"I don't know, Sarah. I like that they're our stories and I think that Tyler does too. He doesn't have to share." He shrugged. "If Ty wants to one day write them and publish them, I'm not going to stop him."
Sarah placed a lingering kiss on his cheek. "You're the best dad ever, Chuck. We're so lucky to have you."
"I think we're all pretty lucky," he leant down and captured her lips with his own, pouring every emotion into the kiss. "Think I can get luckier?" he asked, as they broke apart.
Sarah sat up and pulled her shirt back up over her head before crawling back over to him. "I think that can be arranged."
The clock ticked over to 2am and all was quiet in the Bartowski house; Chuck and Sarah were tangled in each other's arms and Tyler was crashed in his own bed, his X-Men duvet cover wrapped around him. No one suspected anything would ever happen.
They were quick and they were quiet and professional. They cut the main and the backup power for the alarm at the same time. Using an electric lock pick, they made quick work of the front door. Two entered the house, while two kept look out; one of the interior pair made quick work of tranquilising Chuck and Sarah and their dog, while the second of the masked intruders got what they came for. Tyler.
Chuck and Sarah awoke from their drugged haze the next morning to their dog barking at the bedroom door.
"What happened?" asked Chuck groggily as he pulled the tranquiliser dart out of his shoulder before moving to the one in Sarah's arm.
Quickly Sarah sat up and shot out of bed, hastily throwing on a robe that she found near the foot of the bed. "Tyler," she breathed as she dashed out the door, almost tripping over the large body of the Golden Retriever who had parked himself at the entrance. "Out of my way, Caboose." Crashing through her son's door and seeing his bed empty, Sarah dropped to her knees. "No! This can't be happening. It's all a nightmare," she kept telling herself as Chuck came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her seemingly small frame as she wept silently.
Chuck kissed her softly on the back of her head, "We'll get him back, Sarah. I promise you."
Pulling themselves together, barely, Chuck and Sarah gathered any evidence from around the house that they could find and made their way over to Castle, calling in Casey and Verbanski en route.
"So what have you found so far?" Casey asked, sitting at the conference table next to his wife.
Chuck ran his fingers through his hair and sighed softly. "As of this moment, nothing. We don't know who or why they took our son, but when I find out, they're going to pay."
Casey grunted and nodded in agreement. "You have surveillance; do you have the feed for that?" Verbanski questioned.
"Yeah, we have it routed here, our alarm system comes through here too. The computers would normally send out an alert if the power was tampered with," Chuck replied.
"I'll check it out." Verbanski stood up from the table and set to work trying to piece together the timeline of events.
Throughout the exchange, Sarah was completely silent. As Casey and Chuck continued to work on finding out what happened to Tyler, she quietly excused herself and headed down to the gym.
An hour later, Chuck found Sarah taking out all of her frustrations on the punching bag that was swinging wildly from the ceiling. Moving so that he was standing directly behind the bag, Chuck braced it with his weight, giving her a more stable target to work with.
"Why Tyler? Why did they take our son?" she asked as she pummeled the bag with a barrage of precise kicks and punches, knocking Chuck slightly off kilter.
"I don't know, honey."
"It's not good enough, Chuck! He's seven years old, he's innocent of everything." Tears started flowing down Sarah's cheeks and her movements started to falter.
"I know, Sarah. We'll get him back. I promise."
Sarah stopped attacking the bag and dropped her hands to her side before slumping to the matted floor of the gym, her body wracking with tears. "You can't promise things like that, Chuck," she sobbed.
Chuck crawled over to her and pulled her close, wrapping his entire body around her sweaty one. "Shh…I can promise that because there is nothing I won't do to get him back to us."
Sarah buried her face into her husband's chest, drying her face with his shirt. "I'm sorry. I thought my spy mode would have kicked in by now."
Chuck laughed softly. "We're all entitled to our off days." He kissed her softly. "Why don't you have a shower and freshen up then come back upstairs and we can get to work in finding Tyler, ok?"
She nodded in agreement as she untangled herself from Chuck's grasp and headed to the locker room. Before she left the room, she turned back to him. "I love you, Chuck."
It was almost lunchtime when the call came in.
"Carmichael Industries." Chuck answered the phone succinctly.
"Mr. Carmichael, we have your son," the garbled voice on the end said. Chuck clicked his fingers to get everyone's attention. He mouthed 'trace' to Casey, who quickly rushed to the computer triangulate the signal of the call. "We need you to hand over the agent known as Frost to us by five o'clock tomorrow, or your son will die."
"Let me talk to my son and we will consider this deal," Chuck demanded.
Hearing silence and then a rustling on the other end of the line, Chuck started getting worried. "Dad?"
"Ty. Hey buddy. Everything is gonna be ok, you hear me?"
"I'm scared dad."
"I know you are. Be brave for me Ty."
The garbled voice returned, "Now, about our deal. You will bring Frost to the private airfield just outside of JFK. There I will have agents waiting. When they have Frost in custody, I will release your son."
Chuck thought for a moment, "No deal. We swap them at the same time. I don't know you or trust you to keep your end of the bargain."
"Trust me, Chuck. I only want Frost; your boy is worthless to me. Double cross me, however, and I promise you, I will kill your son." The phone suddenly went dead.
TBC
Don't kill me… I wanted to see what a cliffhanger would be like. If you don't kill me too bad, the next part will be up tomorrow.
AN: So I must point out that I hate the word 'duvet'… we use 'doona' here in my part of Australia and 'duvet' is really quite foreign, as is the use of 'z' instead of 's' or the 'a' instead of the 'y' pyjamas or the lack of use of the letter 'u'. I don't mind writing 'mom' instead of 'mum' because they do have American accents and if you write for an American show, you should use the written form of their spoken words, otherwise it just looks stupid. End Rant.
Oh and my Marvel joke was supposed to be ironic, because we all know the original Marvel universe was not created with children in mind.
In other news, uni is done for the year! Bring on the holidays. Hello beach, sun, beer and cricket.