Chuck Versus Thin Ice
By Steampunk . Chuckster
Summary: On the doorstep of the Olympics, top American curler Sarah Walker has lost her mixed doubles partner and her boyfriend in one fell swoop. Her coaches throw newbie Team U.S.A. curler Chuck Bartowski onto her team and thrust them into the Olympics, hanging America's curling hopes on two people who only have a short amount of time to learn to trust one another.
A/N: So I was editing this and remembered when I was first talking to friends about it like HA HA PROBABLY LIKE 10 OR SO CHAPTERS I DUNNO. Joke's on meeeeeeeeeeeee!
Disclaimer: I don't own this show. I don't own the characters in this show.
The first part was the most difficult part.
He'd only done this one other time, and there weren't layers of security then, nor was there as much of a danger factor.
But last night had been the last straw and he was definitely done letting TV's token curling color commentator get away with his backhanded compliments and patronizing jabs. The U.S. women's curling team had inched past Switzerland's team to win their seventh consecutive match, and instead of talking about the shots, keeping his commentary technical, the jerk had shared an anecdote that had sounded pretty damn personal to Chuck's ears. He didn't wonder that his girlfriend wouldn't be too pleased if she knew what Bryce had said on air. To millions of people.
So something would get her mad right before a match. A fight with her mom, something that happened pretty often…an unruly student or parent…traffic. Ha ha. And she just curled better afterwards. That's the type of curler Sarah Walker is, Mike. She curls better with a chip on her shoulder. I figured that out pretty earlier on in our relationship…and honestly, sometimes I'd get 'er mad before a match just so she'd go out there with a vengeance, make every single shot count. It never failed. I wonder who got her mad before this one, Mike. She's really on fire tonight. Ha ha ha.
The words were singed into Chuck's brain now as he quietly followed about a dozen feet behind Bryce. He nearly threw the cellphone he was pretending to type on at the back of the asshole's head as he felt that anger rise up again.
He kept hold of it, instead, just walking, making sure he subtly kept on eye on the shorter man's back. What had she even seen in him in the first place, he couldn't help but wonder?
Because the guy seemed like such a dick now. Was he different before? Chuck didn't remember him being this way in the months they'd spent curling in the same Midwest club, but then again, Bryce had avoided him quite a bit. And Chuck had avoided Bryce in return. It didn't help foster closeness when Chuck secretly harbored a massive crush on the other man's girlfriend. Woops.
Suddenly a few girls stopped the ex-curler and asked for autographs and selfies, melting as he said something charming no doubt. He rolled his eyes and turned his back, careful not to let his face be seen by the man and his admirers.
And as he peeked over his shoulder, he saw that his target was moving again.
Continuing to follow after him, he smirked a little to himself as he saw that Bryce was finally heading into the stadium. Exactly where he was supposed to be going according to his schedule, which had been surprisingly easy to get access to.
The stadium was one of the venues with rudimentary metal detectors, something that would catch hidden weapons.
The line to go through security was how he was able to gain access to Bryce Larkin's apartment key. He'd taken it out of the bowl into which Bryce had emptied his pockets before going through, utilizing the other man's distraction while he put his belt back on.
Just as quickly, he moved away from the scene of the crime, walking at an even pace through the lobby until he could exit out of one of the building's side mere minutes he was back on the bus headed for the village. He disembarked one stop away from the building where media and press were living during the games, and walked the rest of the way, quickly pulling up the live feed of the men's curling match on his phone during his short journey.
There was Bryce, sitting next to his co-commentator, talking about the U.S. men's team. All he heard was something about John Casey, the team's skip, being a cuddly papa bear, and "really like a father figure to me for so many years", and he closed it, groaning. He'd show Casey footage of that later and revel in the string of curse words the burly guy let out. Father figure my ass!
Because Bryce was an accountant with a shitty memory for numbers somehow—according to Sarah—he'd lucked out in that the idiot jerk had written his room number on a piece of tape and stuck it to the key card.
In the elevator, he hefted his computer bag's strap over his opposite shoulder, then rubbed his sweating hands on his pants. All he needed was an hour. That was it. One single hour.
But first…
The elevator doors slid open and Chuck calmly stepped into the hallway, subtly eyeing the numbers on the doors as he walked past. A door up ahead opened and Rhonda Ellison from Los Angeles' local news channel stepped out into the hallway. Shit, he did an interview with her before the Olympics in Sochi. She was a damn smart woman, too. She'd know him immediately.
So he thought fast, snagging a brochure out of a travel-brochure waterfall pressed against the nearby window and with a flick of his wrist it was open. He raised it up to cover his face, as though reading it, and held it there until she passed him. She was none the wiser.
With a bit of a cocky, crooked smile, he couldn't help the smarmy skip to his step, feeling almost like a spy or a private detective as he turned the corner.
Until finally, he stopped at the door to Bryce Larkin's room NBC was providing him. He had no roommates. None of them did. Privileged buttheads. But then again, he found he wouldn't want to trade his own roommate for a single apartment.
As he swiped the key, the light turned green and a happy little beep sounded.
Happy for Chuck Bartowski.
Less happy for Bryce Larkin.
He took only a moment to sweep his gaze around the room once he went inside and shut the door behind him, and then a wide grin took over his features. As he shrugged his backpack off and set it on the nearby table, he almost snickered in anticipation.
This was his time…
All of his training, every bit of trickery and code-languages he'd taught himself over the years would be utilized here.
God, this was gonna be so great.
-oooo-
Sarah stood up and stretched her arms over her head with a yawn as Beckman closed her notepad, their team meeting over for the day. She grabbed her bag and slung it over her shoulder.
"See you ladies tonight, then?" she asked, turning to her teammates. They beat Sweden the night before, keeping their record at eight wins and no losses, and now they only had South Korea left on the docket tonight, a team that was also at eight wins, zero losses.
"We're actually going to eat. Wanna join?" Anna asked.
She nibbled her lip. She was tired more than she was hungry. And she had leftovers from her dinner the night before in her fridge. There was also the chance that Chuck had already gotten back from the men's match he'd told her he was meaning to go to and the idea of napping snuggled up against his side on the couch was what finally made her shake her head. "Nah, I've got leftovers in my fridge and then I'm gonna take a nap. I'm beat."
As they split off, Jane sidled up next to her and bumped her with her shoulder. "You just want to spend time with your boyfriend more than you do with your teammates. I see you, girl."
Sarah rolled her eyes and grinned. "I want to spend time with my bed more than I do with my teammates."
"Yeah, but who else is gonna be in that bed?"
She gave her friend a teasing shove as they walked into the section of the lobby where the TV was set up. A group of seven guys sat around in the lounge chairs watching curling. They were laughing, which was…strange. Curling wasn't exactly the type of thing that incited laughter.
Zondra once admitted to falling asleep while trying to watch curling. Turning her friend into a curling fan was something she'd tried to do once, but she knew her now-agent just wasn't going to switch over to Team Curling. The woman would be Team MMA until she died.
Laughter, though? What was going on there?
Jane gave her a curious look and she was glad she wasn't the only one confused. They walked up to the group side by side.
"What's goin' on here, boys?" Jane asked.
One of them turned from his seat, wiping tears from his eyes. "Aw man. It's great. This guy doing the commentary for curling is totally crashing and burning."
"This is the most fun I've ever had watching this sport!" another one laughed, obviously not recognizing who he was talking to, or noticing the word "curling" on their jackets.
Sarah raised an eyebrow at Jane and they moved a little closer to the TV.
Jane shushed a few of the louder guys near them.
"Well, Larrsen hasn't been throwing up to his potential today, Bryce. He usually throws at about a ninety percent, and right now he's only sitting at a seventy," Mike said.
"Oh, definitely. He—Um, yeah I'm really surprised."
Suddenly another voice came over the mics, softer than the two commentators' voices, but Sarah heard it loud and clear. It was a woman's voice: "Bryce is chocobo poop."
Did she hear that right? Her jaw fell open as she gaped at the TV.
"Wait, shhhh! Shh! Dude, turn it up!" one of the guys said. Everyone quieted down and the teenager with the remote turned it up."What, uh, what was that, Bryce?"
"N-Noth—Er, I am surprised that-that Larrsen is—"
"Bryce is chocobo poop," the voice said again, much clearer this time.
The ex-curler tried to talk over the Siri voice coming through the mic, trying to drown it out. "Larrsen is struggling with his release, it looks like. And his angle—"
"Bryce eats chocobo poop. Bryce eats poop."
"Uh…maybe you wanna fix that Apple watch, pal?" Mike chuckled.
"What the hell is a chocobo?" Jane teenager with the remote was losing his mind with laughter, barely able to stay in his chair. "F-Final…Final Fantasy…" was all he managed to get out.
Sarah didn't care what the…chocobo thing was. She was too busy covering her face with her hand, trying not to show just how insanely hilarious this was to her.
"Is his watch telling him he eats poop?" Jane asked. "Am I hearing this shit right?"
"Well, folks, we're definitely keeping things entertaining!" Mike O'Brien tried as there was the sound of a mic being muffled, and a faraway Siri repeating "Bryce likes poop. Bryce likes poop. Bryce likes poop."
"Shit, this whole time I thought curling was boring!" one of the guys was hunched over she was laughing so hard. Bryce was fumbling, trying to play it off, trying to act like his Apple watch hadn't just told him he likes poop on air, live, in front of millions of viewers.
Sarah tried to control her own peels of laughter, putting a hand on Jane's arm. "Oh my God. I need to go make sure Chuck is seeing this!"
All her best friend could do was nod, still laughing and coughing at the same time, waving her away.
Still laughing, tears on her face, Sarah raced to the elevator in her wing of the building. She pulled her phone out and opened Twitter, checking the Olympics hashtags. So far only a few people were tweeting:
"LMFAO what's up with this curling match?"
"Anybody else seeing this?"
"Bryce Larkin's Apple watch keeps saying stuff about chocobos and I need Mike O'Brien to call him a spoony bard. Hahahaha!"
Whatever that last one meant…
But before she could get too far into it, the elevator doors opened and she dashed through the hallway to get to her apartment.
God, she hoped Chuck was inside. He needed to see this. He would absolutely die. Maybe if he wasn't here she could record it on her phone and show him when he got back.
She hurriedly swiped her keycard and rushed into the room, throwing her bag down once she saw Chuck sitting on the couch.
He had his laptop on his lap and was typing madly, grinning at the screen. The TV was on, too, on the same match they had downstairs, Sweden versus Finland, and the volume was on high enough that he hadn't seemed to notice her arrival.
"Chuck, are you seeing this?" she exclaimed, laughing again.
He whipped around then, his eyes wide. "Oh. Shit. Didn't see ya there. Uh…yeah…yeah, I'm…seeing it. Ha."
"They have it on down in the lobby. A crowd was starting to gather because everyone was laughing so. hard. They said he was crashing and burning before, but I got there when his watch starting talking about him being poop." She threw her head back and laughed, crossing the room quickly and plopping down onto the couch next to him.
But Chuck immediately scooted a foot away and turned his laptop so that she couldn't see the screen. He looked a bit frazzled, she noticed suddenly. The way someone might look if they were caught doing something. Or almost caught.
"Yeah, it's really funny," he said, seeming to finally slip a mask over his initial reaction, acting a little more normal now. "He got to the pre-game chat late and Mike had to go on without him. He was all bedraggled and unkempt and rushed when he finally got there, and he was fumbling a lot even when the match started. Said his alarm didn't go off at the right time. Ha ha. Likely story, am I right? And now with the other thing on his watch?…Man, it's great."
"How is his watch saying that stuff and he can't turn it off or anything? Like, how do you even manage to have Siri say something like that from your watch?" She shook her head and laughed. "Seems to have stopped now."
"I don't know, is it Siri on the watch? I guess you can call it Siri. I, um, I don't know how that works. It's probably just a glitch."
"A glitch that makes your watch say you're poop? And what the hell is a ch…chubba…"
"Chocobo," he said immediately, and he chuckled, a bit of a mischievous sound to it, before he cleared his throat and pulled into himself, scratching his ear. "Um, I think it's from a video game. It's a large flightless bird. Yeah. I think."
"Oh. I guess you'd know." And then she paused, her blue eyes dropping to the laptop he was trying to subtly ease down onto the ground at his feet. "What's that?"
"Huh?"
"What are you doing on there?"
"Hm? Where? Oh, this? It's my—I'm just checking my, uh, my email."
"Why'd you turn it away from me when I sat down?" she asked, realizing suddenly that she'd seem him actively scoot away, too.
"No, I—I didn't do that. I'm just putting it to the side so I can, er, have some, er, have some uninterrupted quality time with my girlfriend," he drawled, reaching out to teasingly poke her in the side.
She pushed his hand away, squirming, not persuaded in the least.
"You turned it away so I couldn't see what you were doing." She raised an eyebrow.
Chuck just stared for a long moment, and then he let out a weak, half-hearted, "No…"
"Chuck."
"It's porn."
Sarah just laughed at that. "Chuck, seriously."
He sighed heavily and pushed his hands through his curls. Then he winced and reached down to pick his laptop up off the floor and put it back on his lap. He licked his lips and sighed again. "Just…please don't be mad at me."
Her mouth fell open. "Wait, is it porn?"
"No!" he laughed. Then he scooted closer to her and shifted on the couch so that they could both see his laptop screen. All she saw were a few boxes that confused her, lots of numbers and letters and symbols…
"What's this? Are you…programming something? Is your computer broken?"
"No. And no. Well, sort of yes to the first one, but my computer's just fine. It's, um, it's Bryce's computer that maybe needs…ahem, some protection."
Sarah just turned and stared at him. "What?"
He paused for a long time, fidgeting a bit. "You, uh, you know how I said Bryce showed up late to his job today? And he looked all messy and unkempt?"
"Yeah."
"He also looked pretty tired."
"Okay. And?"
"Well, he didn't get much sleep."
Sarah was so confused. She frowned. "How would you know that?"
Chuck wrinkled his nose. "Because I did it."
She was even more confused by his answer, and she shook her head. "No. I know for a fact that you were the little spoon to my big spoon last night. All night. I am a light sleeper and I'd know if you left."
"I didn't have to leave." He pointed to his laptop screen with a nonchalant flick of his thumb. "I just set it up from here, climbed into bed with you, and slept like a baby." That grin of his, lord help her. "He didn't, though. He had a rough time of it…every thirty to forty five minutes, this incessant beeping…first his alarm on his phone, then his watch…or maybe I did watch first, I don't remember." Her eyes slowly got bigger and bigger as he kept going. "I let him have a good hour and a half in the early morning, but then his Apple watch went off again. He also ordered an in-room massage at five in the morning (yes, the media folks do have that option, I know, it's ridiculous)…and he definitely didn't recall ordering that massage. When did he do that? Who gets a massage at five AM, am I right?" He scoffed and shrugged.
Sarah grabbed his shoulder. "Chuck…what are you talking about?"
"All the clocks in his room were also an hour early. Don't know how that happened, either. Including his watch, which he always uses for his wake up alarm anyway. He talked about it a few times back at the curling club before he quit. I remember him specifically talking about having to set it every night."
She gawked for a moment, then shook her head. "Stop your rambling for a second and just tell me what the hell is going on?"
Chuck smiled a bit tentatively. Then he turned his attention to his laptop again and gestured to the TV screen. "Watch this."
She was getting a bit perturbed now, since he wasn't giving her a clear answer, but she turned to watch the TV anyway. She heard Chuck clicking away on the keys of his laptop.
"Their record on the year has been on a pretty steady incline, Mike," Bryce was saying. "But, you know, this is their last match of the—"
"You are a giant poop ball."
Sarah snorted. "Oh, there goes his watch aga—"
She froze, and then she slowly turned to look at Chuck who was watching her closely, through his eyelashes. "…Chuck?"
He turned his laptop to face her and gestured to the screen. "What's something you've always wanted to say to Bryce Larkin? That's, um…appropriate for television. There might be kids watchin'." He shrugged one shoulder.
"What?" she asked, breathless.
"Just type it in there."
She reached over and typed Butthead.
Chuck tapped enter for her and she heard the Siri voice on the screen chirp, "Butthead" in its robotic voice.
Sarah clasped her hands to her face with a gasp.
"So anyway, that's what I've been up to the last two days."
She just stared at the TV.
"What…the…fuck?"
She spun on Chuck then and twisted her fist in his T-shirt.
"What the fuck?"
Her boyfriend shrugged sheepishly. "Sorry, he just…he had it coming."
"No! Chuck! What the fuck is going on? How are you telling his Apple watch what to say from here? From your laptop?" She let out a nervous laugh. "How's that even possible?"
"You can connect Apple watches to your device through iTunes, and I finagled it so that the connection is invisible—basically so that he has no idea his watch is connected to my laptop. But anyway, I have full control of his watch. From here. I could potentially have it play the theme from Benny Hill, which would be so hilarious, but he'd have to have the track on his watch already and that would've taken too much time to download it first and yadda yadda."
"How? What did you do?" She was scared suddenly and she gripped onto him with both hands. "Did you do something that's going to get you kicked out of the Olympics, Chuck? Did you?"
"No! I mean, no. No. Listen, I am not going to get caught. I made sure to cover my tracks big time. Not even South Korean wireless can pick up on this. And they have an amazing freakin' system. Just wow. I was playing around in it and they're way better than we are with their—"
"Covered your tracks?" she interrupted. "What in the hell? How? How is any of this even happening? I can't believe you're the one doing this!"
"Oh! Wait! I've got an idea…Wait, you're gonna love this."
He turned the laptop to face him again and she kept ahold of him, just gaping, absolutely floored, not even knowing what to do.
And then Bryce's watch interrupted the commentary again and said, "I'm sorry. I don't understand 'Find directions to my butt'."
Chuck let out the most immature snicker she'd ever heard in her life. "Perfect."
"Really?" she asked, giving him a flat look.
He shrugged defensively. "Oh, come on! That was funny!"She grabbed the remote and muted the TV then, catching his eye seriously. "How did you get access to his Apple watch?"
"I told you. I—"
"No, Chuck. Not that. You can't just randomly connect your laptop to someone's Apple watch out of thin air!" She paused. "Wait. Can you?"
He narrowed his eyes and shrugged. "The answer to that is complicated. It would've been way more work than what I did."
Sarah leaned closer, eyes wide. "What did you do?"
"Um…Just don't be mad."
"You keep saying that. I'm not gonna be mad. Please just tell me."
"So I broke into his apartment—"
"What?!" She felt the blood leave her face.
"No, I mean…That sounds like I picked the lock. I stole his key and used that to get in."
"How the fuck did you get his key?" she asked, putting both hands on top of her head in disbelief. This was insane. This was totally insane.
"I followed him through the security line, you know with the metal detectors, and you empty your pockets into the little bowls. I just came up behind him and nicked it outta the bowl."
She stared at him for a second. Was he serious? Did he really do that? And how was he so nonchalant about this? Did he typically steal people's keys and go into their apartments? Who is this guy?
"Chuck, that is freaking insane! Do you still have the key?"
"Nope. Left it in his room." She threw her hands up. "Don't worry, Sarah. I'm not some freakin' n00b. I slipped it under his bed and covered it in his sheets and stuff like he'd just dropped it himself accidentally. That asshole doesn't make his bed, by the way. Not surprised."
"Yeah, I know. I always had to make it for him," she said, rolling her eyes. And then she realized how intimate of a detail that was and she blushed. Chuck's eyes popped a little and he squirmed uncomfortably. "But you—you went through all of this trouble to get into his room. For what?"
"Access to his computer and the electronics and such—clocks and the like, you know. His Apple watch is linked to his laptop, so I connected my laptop to his laptop. That got me access to his watch. Only took me an hour to do it. It's not exactly easy, but not a problem for this guy." He grinned and flicked his thumb at his own chest.
"How the hell—? Like, seriously. I'm pretty tech savvy and I have no idea how you did any of this. You can't just…copy and paste a connection to an Apple watch from his computer to yours. You can't do that."
"Well, it's not that simple. It's not copy and paste. But it's a little trick I taught myself back in my Piranha days." He froze then and she turned slowly to look at him.
"Your…what?"
Chuck winced. "That's, uh, that's what they called me. When, um, when I was a, um…"
"When you were a what?"
"I used to, um, do some…" He scratched the back of his head and mumbled something under his breath that she didn't catch.
"What? I didn't catch that."
"Hacking. I used to do some heavy-duty hacking."
Sarah didn't even know what to say. She just turned to face forward, sitting ramrod straight, staring at the wall. "You were a hacker?" She spun to look at him, eyes wide. "Wait, are you still a hacker? Is this something you still do?"
"No. Well, I just did this," he said, gesturing to his computer and then to the TV. "But I haven't done anything since I started training for Sochi. Olympic competition and being a professional hacker doesn't meld well."
"I just…had no idea. I didn't know you were…"
"Well, it isn't really how I introduce myself, ya know. Hey, I'm Chuck. But my hacker name is Piranha."
"No, of course not because it's—Did you do illegal stuff?"
"I think this is probably illegal, but I'd have to brush up on my South Korean cyber laws." He cleared his throat and blushed.
She was speechless. He was a hacker. A full-blown hacker. She had so many questions. Did he ever steal? Did he do the kinds of things she saw in movies about hackers? If he did that stuff, did it change things? The Chuck she knew would never do things to actively hurt innocent people. And as she turned to look at him, she felt the tension and nerves seep out of her. The Chuck she knew, the Chuck she'd spent time with for the last few months, day in and day out, training, supporting one another, learning from each other, and sleeping together for this last week and a half…that was him. She had no doubts, not even after learning about all of this. But that didn't change how absolutely shocked she was.
"You're absolutely crazy. You know that? Like, I think I've seen everything when it comes to you and you throw something else at me—like, for instance, that you're some sort of genius hacker who can do things I never thought possible."
Chuck winced. "Are you angry with me?"
"No, I'm not angry with you. I'm…I don't know how to feel. I mean, this is seriously bonkers, Chuck. You snuck into Bryce's apartment and hacked…something…to make it so you could control his Apple watch…"
"I made his watch think he's in Hong Kong. That's why he was so late."
Sarah couldn't help it. She laughed. That was legitimately funny. "That's evil." He shrugged, a mischievous glint in his eye. "Chuck, you do know that there's a chance you've given Bryce Larkin perhaps the single worst day of his life, right?"
"Mhm. Singlehandedly." He grabbed the ice coffee he'd been drinking from the coffee table and cockily took a long sip from it through the straw. She was dysfunctional, because this was suddenly really sexy. This man's brain was a delicious blend of brilliance (the kind of brilliance that was incredibly rare) and mischief. And God, he was so damn funny.
"Buuut," he continued, "maybe he shouldn't have talked so gleefully about how he used to make you mad before your matches on purpose to try to make you curl better…like a freakin' piece of shit. Because that's what really pushed me over the edge."
"Did he seriously say that?"
"Mhm."
"On air?"
"Yyyyep. And he shouldn't be sharing personal anecdotes about you like that, for millions to hear. It's mean. Like, what did you ever do to him? Win more things with another partner because his loser ass broke up with you and quit the team eight weeks before the tournament? You didn't do shit to deserve him being such a dick." He crossed his arms, a deep line between his eyebrows as he scowled at the TV.
She felt an ache in her chest then, and she ducked her head. "He said personal stuff about me?"
"Yeah. I mean, I assume it is. There's still…a lot I don't know about ya."
Sarah frowned deeply and scratched the back of her neck. "Well, that sucks."
His hand slid over hers and he squeezed. "I'm sorry, Sarah. I shouldn't have told you, especially 'cause it's just bullshit that'll make you feel bad. But now you know why I did this to him instead of, um, taking the high road."
She tried to smile reassuringly but it fell flat. "No, I'm glad you told me. He's a dick. Just kind of sucks to know that he always was a dick and I somehow just…missed it, I guess. Or was too distracted to see it." But she shook all of that off, because she was sitting next to a man who not only wasn't a dick, he went well out of his way to make like a hacker spy and give Bryce Larkin exactly what was coming to him. And he didn't do it for himself. He didn't do it because Bryce had said backhanded, snarky things about him. He did it because Bryce had insulted her. Because he'd overstepped and said things about her she maybe didn't want people to know.
She grabbed the remote and turned the sound back on. Then she reached over and turned his laptop. She could see the phrases they'd typed, all things she'd heard her ex-boyfriend's watch say on live television, buried amidst a bunch of coding, things she didn't even begin to understand. The fact that Chuck did understand it made him insanely impressive in her mind.
"Where do I type?" she asked her new boyfriend, a man of much greater character, with a much bigger heart. And yes, he had illegally broken into someone else's apartment and hacked his Apple watch to potentially ruin his run as a sports commentator. Yes, that was most likely illegal. But it was fine. Bryce deserved it.
A look of absolute glee and mischief lit Chuck's adorable face as he reached around and pointed. "There. What are you typing? Wait, don't tell me, I wanna be surprised!" He clapped his hands together and bounced on the couch, making her giggle. "Oh, and, um, don't forget to press enter."
Sarah smirked at him. "Got it."
Biting her lip, she typed it out, then pressed enter.
Siri's voice chirped, "I'm sorry. Did you say you needed directions to…" There was that robotic pause for just a split second, and then, "the clitoris?"
Chuck exploded into laughter. "SARAH, WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN?"
She laughed as well, hearing both Bryce and Mike stutter to try to cover the snafu. But it was done… And if Chuck and Sarah had heard it, so had all of America.
"You know what? We're just going to take the watch off and, uh…" She heard Bryce lower his voice, "Connie, can you set this over there for me? Uh, thanks…"
"Aw, mannnnn!" Chuck whined. "He took the watch off."
He shut his laptop then, setting it on the coffee table in front of him. "Although, it took him a lot longer than I thought it was going to take. Like, what an idiot. If your watch is saying you're poop on live television, the best thing to do is to take it off and put it away from the mic."
"You know, this might end up meaning he isn't invited back for commentating again after the Olympics. I mean, this is bad. Being late, having his watch repeat immature insults about poop for a live television audience to hear…" She giggled. God, her boyfriend was such a five year old.
"Oh, he'll be fine," Chuck said, scoffing. "He's always got his modeling career."
Sarah just watched him as he took another sip of his iced coffee. She took him in, all of him. In his rumpled jeans, his bare feet perched at the corner of the coffee table, his zip-up sweatshirt crooked with the hood inside out.
This guy was Piranha. A professional hacker. Not anymore, he'd told her. And she believed him.
But she had some research to do. Would "Hacker Piranha" come up with anything in Google, she wondered?
He put his coffee back on the table, rubbing his hands up and down his pants. "I'm sorry, Sarah. I know this was probably ill-advised. Definitely ill-advised. But you gotta know, I-I know what I'm doing. I know how to do this without leaving a trail of breadcrumbs, so to speak. Nobody in the world knows who Piranha is." He winced. "Except for you now. Oh, and Morgan, but Morgan is…he's Morgan."
"Wait, your sister—"
"She'd murder me if she knew, are you kiddin' me? Messing around with hacking while I was applying to colleges, when I was at Stanford? She'd call me insane and selfish. And she'd be right but…I'm good at it. Really good. That's why nobody's ever pinned Piranha on me."
Sarah let out a slow breath. "Your secret is safe with me, Piranha—oh, I mean Chuck," she teased with a wince.
"Uh ohhhhh," he teased back in a drawl, pointing at her.
Giggling, she scooted closer to him and reached behind his head to fix his hood, running her fingers along it dotingly, then tugging on the string. "You could've gotten into trouble. All to be my knight in shining armor."
"Well, not really. I, um, didn't plan on telling you it was me. He was an asshole to you and I wanted vengeance. What he's doing is mean and it's wrong no matter who he's saying it about, but nobody messes with my girl."
"Mmmmm." She sighed, shaking her head. "Say that again."
He smiled slowly, his brown eyes filled with something she dared not analyze too much, not just yet. "Nobody messes with my girl."
Bryce's stumbling broke into their moment then and she turned to watch for a moment, giggling as she spread her hand out on Chuck's chest and leaned forward against him. "I'm really glad you're on my side."
He chuckled. "Glad to hear it."
"And, for the record, there might be something wrong with me, because I kinda think all of this makes you about seventy-five percent sexier." She shrugged shyly, wrinkling her nose. "Okay, eighty."
"Well, then I think you should know that I changed his Apple watch face to a picture of Carrot Top and no matter what he does, he won't be able to change it."
Sarah giggled through her nose and turned off the TV altogether, letting the remote slip out of her hand and to the floor. "I love it when you talk dirty to me."
They were both laughing when he pulled her in for a kiss.
-oooo-
"Ya know, this kind of sucks."
Chuck turned away from the curling match going on to look at his sister who sat next to him. "I know. It's freakin' stressful. We're down by three points with only three Ends left."
She furrowed her brow. "Oh. I mean, agreed. That sucks, too. Definitely. But I was actually talking about the fact that you…" Ellie leaned in close and lowered her voice. "You can't be outwardly…outward…about you two. Ya know."
He huffed and scratched the back of his head. "Yeah. It does kinda suck. But you saw the standings. Whether they win or lose tonight, they're into the playoffs. This is just going to determine whether they're in first or in second behind South Korea. But that's going to be crazy important. And Sarah needs to focus."
"Yes, but…"
He eyed her closely. "But what, El?"
"Doesn't it bum you out? Like, you're in this great new relationship, with all the uncertainty and awkwardness and fun that goes with it." Uncertainty, awkwardness, and fun? That's cheery, he thought to himself sarcastically. Really selling it there, Ellie. "But you have this added pressure of locking it all up inside when you're around other people. Having to suppress your happiness."
Chuck shook his head. "I don't have to suppress my happiness. I just can't really let people know what it stems from…" He shrugged. "This tournament is so important to her, Ellie. The shit people are giving her, the negativity, all of the Bryce bullshit… They've all got a lot to prove, but so much of the weight is on Sarah's shoulders alone. And I'm so determined not to add my own weight to it." He paused. "I mean the weight of our…" He lowered his voice to a whisper. "…relationship that nobody knows about, including you and Awesome."
She looked away and nodded. "As long as you aren't unhappy about all of this."
"I'm not. Not at all. It's something I'm finding I have to really concentrate on the more we're together. The more I get comfortable and learn more about her. Like, resisting the urge to hold her hand if we're walking somewhere…" He pressed his lips together and shrugged.
"That's what I mean, Chuck. Doesn't it bother you? It bothers me. I have second hand…botherment. I just wanna be able to hug the crap out of that girl and thank her for making my little brother happy again. And I wanna tell her all about Mr Bum. And Mr No-Tummy."
Chuck's eyes widened dangerously as she giggled. "When all this is out in the open," he hissed, "you will not tell her things like that. I'd like to keep her around, please."
She just laughed outright, then pointed to the ice. "Your girl just got her team two points."
He spun back to the ice and murmured, "Don't say stuff like that so loudly." But his admonishment was only half-assed because Sarah Walker had relief all over her face. They were only one point down with two Ends left. They could pull this back. They could do it.
But then in the ninth End, South Korea was forced to take one point, extending their lead to two points again.
And now Sarah had the hammer in the tenth End, but she would have to get three points to win the match. Two points to send it into overtime. Her teammates just did whatever they could to take South Korea's yellow rocks out of the house wherever possible, leaving the house clear for a few throws. But then Jane changed tactics, slipping a rock in to stop in the house perfectly behind a guard. And then she delivered another to hide behind a guard Anna had set up on the T-line.
Sarah's first shot of the End took out two South Korean rocks, clearing the center of the house again.
Chuck was absolutely enraptured, watching her from the stands again. He leaned forward, putting his arms on the railing in front of him and resting his chin there, with no thought as to what it might look like to anyone else. If someone took a picture from somewhere in the stands, some photographer somewhere down on the ice, he didn't think about them, he definitely didn't notice them, and if he had, he wouldn't care.
Ellie was suddenly leaning next to him, mimicking his position. "Is this how she looked in Chicago?" she asked, nudging him with her arm.
He just sent her a dry look and went back to watching Sarah discuss her shot with her teammates.
"I mean, I get why you became so obsessed. Why you were all moony and in a dream state when you told me about 'this girl' later on that night. It was the first time after your accident that I saw you actually give a shit about something that wasn't a video game or a scifi B-Movie from nineteen-fifty-four." She paused as he felt himself blushing. "I get why you were so obsessed, though. She's a force of nature out there. I'm almost a little obsessed."
"I wasn't obsessed," he said quietly. "I was moved."
"Mmmhm. I'm sure the modelesque stature, the luminescent blond hair, and her eyes that are so blue you can see them from all the way up in the stands didn't help at all."
He chuckled. "Of course it helped. She's unbelievably pretty. It's what made me pick her out from everyone else in the first place. But she's so focused and driven and confident. And calm." He stopped talking as Sarah took her second to last shot. She not only bumped South Korea out of the house altogether with it, she also laid the shooter just inches away from the button so that her team was lying three rocks. "And then she does that and you just have to…" He sat back in his chair again and sunk in the seat, letting out a long sigh.
Ellie giggled. "You're sunk, brother."
"Like I'm in quicksand," he admitted to her quietly.
"I never thought the woman you told me about with heart-eyes after that tournament two years ago would eventually become…" She sat back too and lowered her voice. "…your girlfriend. Even when you were recruited for the team and moved to the Midwest to train. Even when you came back to California and were made partners for the Olympics. It just seemed so farfetched."
He laughed in disbelief. "Tell me about it. Wasn't even on my radar."
"It's the cutest. But no offense, I never ever thought…"
"None taken. I'm a bit beside myself about it, too."
"It's almost like a movie. Like, she saved you, Chuck." She crossed her arms and turned away from the game to look at him seriously. "And then you basically rescued her from the shit Bryce pulled."
"I had no choice. Don't give me so much credit."
"Bullshit. There's always a choice. You made the choice that meant Sarah getting an Olympic medal in an event that literally everyone counted her out of when Bryce bounced."
"It wasn't just me, though. She also—"
"Chuck, shut up and take the nice, brainy compliment I just gave you. God." She ruffled his hair lovingly and he chuckled, holding his hands up in surrender.
"Kay."
They settled back into a comfortable silence and he leaned forward against the railing again.
South Korea was ending their game with a shot that slipped their last rock directly onto the button, bouncing Sarah's red rock a few inches away. But that gave Sarah a ripe opening. All she had to do was clear that rock off the button, out of the house, and she'd win the game.
The team didn't even have to discuss it. As though all four of them knew exactly what Sarah had to do. They didn't even offer her encouragement or words of support. They didn't have to, Chuck thought. If anyone questioned whether or not Sarah could pull this off, they either had never seen her curl, or they knew nothing about the sport.
Sarah executed the last throw of the match with unrivaled precision, not just taking out South Korea's last rock, but the shooter stopped inside of the house. She'd scored four points, winning the game for the U.S.
They sat two points over South Korea, ten to eight. And they were going into the playoffs in first position.
Chuck lifted his fists over his head and belted out a loud, "OH, YEAH!"
The South Korean team came over to concede, and once the handshakes were finished, Team U.S.A. merely gave one another quick high fives and hugs. It was incredible how calculated and confident they were that a big celebration wasn't even needed for any of the four women.
They known they were going to win, Chuck realized.
Holy shit, they are total BAMFs.
Ellie's phone was thrust in his face, then. "I think this about sums it up."
Someone had tweeted a picture of Sarah from the beginning of this match, in position at the hack, her stunning face set in determination and concentration, her fingers perfectly placed on the handle of the rock, laser focus in her ridiculously blue eyes. And they put HBIC in bold black letters on the bottom of the picture.
Chuck laughed. "Too right."
When he switched his gaze down to the ice, he saw that Sarah was pointing up into the stands at him. When their eyes met, she flipped her hand into a thumbs up, arm completely outstretched. He outstretched his own arm and flashed her a thumbs up, winking.
She was gone then, a freaking women's team curling Olympic gold medalist in the making. He just knew it.
A/N: I ask that everyone remembers how the show is about a CIA database somehow being transferred into a man's brain through a series of flashy images he sees on a computer screen before I'm judged for what I did with Chuck/hacking/Bryce's Apple watch. I honestly don't wanna hear it. Love you all, really I do, but I don't wanna hear it. I say this knowing full well I'll still hear it. From somebody, somewhere. Some person who is chocobo poop.
Other than that, I'd love reviews! Thanks for reading!
-SC