If Chuck had been the kind of guy who indulged in New Year's resolutions, his might have been something along the lines of never, ever drinking again. Ever. New Year's Eve was pretty much a blur to him, courtesy of the increasingly bottom shelf liquor he and Bryce had imbibed in what Chuck could only recall as a holy shit we actually survived 2007 (not for lack of people trying to kill us) so now let's get drunk and forget any of this ever actually happened celebration. But, on the bright side, he and Bryce had been holed up in Bryce's apartment away from the chaos of Ellie and Awesome's annual New Year's Eve party. Neither of them had felt particularly sociable and Morgan had plans to kiss Anna at midnight, so Chuck hadn't spilled any of the very nasty secrets hiding away in the recesses of his mind, nor had he done something impulsive like try and kiss Sarah at midnight. He supposed he could forgive the monumental hangover (and the fact that Bryce had looked fresh as a daisy the days afterwards) and try and make the best of a year he'd managed to start as happily as possible.

At least things had been relatively quiet on the Intersect front since the unfortunate run-in between Casey's beloved Crown Vic and a missile. Chuck had managed a peaceful holiday; he'd watched far too many Christmas movies (of which the first two Die Hard's were regular features), had eaten his bodyweight in Christmas cookies, and had awoken bright and early Christmas morning to the miracle of having the four people he loved the most with him. Yes, he did have to put up with Casey's pointed glares every time he crossed the courtyard or took out the trash, but it was a small price to pay to enjoy the holidays with his family.

.

Chuck awoke ten days into the new year, three days into his first working week of it, feeling pretty good. It wasn't cup of coffee greeting him on the nightstand good, but pretty good nonetheless. He could hear Ellie and Bryce debating the merits of the films currently on at the cinema, their combined voices forming a soothing soundtrack to his slow ascent into wakefulness.

Bryce's easy smile greeted Chuck when he did his uncaffeinated zombie walk into the kitchen. "Mornin' buddy," he grinned, laughter threading his voice as Chuck grunted a hello and reached blindly for the mug helpfully sitting in front of his friend.

Ellie smiled, protectively clutching her coffee even as she carried on with her arguments for why they should go and see National Treasure 2. Bryce, who had an irrational dislike of Nicholas Cage (details of which Chuck had sworn never to reveal but involved a series of torturous dates for his friend back in sophomore year), was unmoved. In fact, even to Chuck's bleary eyes, his friend was downright intransigent.

Chuck sipped at his liberated coffee, considering the array of cereals on the shelf. Behind him, Bryce began an impassioned defence of why they should go and see literally anything else, leaping on the Alien Versus Predator sequel like the true sci-fi nerd he was. Chuck, because he was a good friend, cast his vote alongside Bryce's, letting his friend reclaim his half-drunk coffee with the promise from Bryce that he'd fix one up just the way Chuck liked it.

Ellie tsked at them, shaking her head fondly. "Don't you boys ever get tired of watching sci-fi?"

Chuck turned towards Bryce in time to catch his identical look of confusion. The superspy nodded to say he had this one, depositing a new mug of coffee in front of Chuck.

"Ellie," Bryce began, as if what he was about to say was abundantly obvious. "Chuck and I are, for want of a better term, massive nerds. It's who we are. It's in our DNA. He's a nerd, I'm a nerd; we're nerds. And nerds, my dear Dr Bartowski, will never get tired of watching sci-fi. Even the most terrible sci-fi movie we will watch - happily - several times at least. It's just the way the world works."

Chuck, with a spoonful of cereal raised to his lips, grinned and nodded at Ellie. "What he said." Still, he turned laughing eyes on Bryce. "Massive nerds, buddy? I object."

Bryce snorted into his mug, eyes dancing. "Chuck, buddy, we stayed up late last night marathoning the Next Gen movies, to say nothing of the fact that we're fluent in Klingon. We could Olympic medal in nerdiness."

That was true. But, Chuck wouldn't just let his best friend have the last word. "You'd win gold."

"Hey!" Bryce protested, Ellie just laughing at the free entertainment. "There's no way I'm nerdier than you, Bartowski."

"Perhaps not," Chuck conceded gracefully. "But we both know you're prettier than I am. You'd look better on the podium."

Bryce's laughter echoed, his friend shaking his head. "Okay, buddy, I'll give you that one," he chuckled, flashing his movie star smile. "Just so long as you agree that this isn't one of those no-points-for-second-place things."

Chuck snickered, having a brief flashback to that weekend when Ellie (trying to pretend she hadn't a crush on Val Kilmer since the eighties) had coerced Awesome into suggesting Top Gun for movie night. He and Bryce had been slipping in quotes from the film for days for fun.

"What? You don't think you could win Top Nerd?"

"I could, but I don't think Tom Cruise could have pulled that one off quite so well."

"No, but think how great it would've been."

Bryce smirked, eyes glittering over his coffee mug. "Ah, but would they have felt the need for warp speed or light speed?"

Ellie's light laughter drew them from their conversation, his sister watching them as if she was the sanest person in the room. Which, considering their respective career paths and senses of self-preservation (looking at you, Bryce), she definitely was.

"Do you hear the words coming out of your mouths sometimes?" she asked, more amused than judgemental.

"We try not to," Chuck agreed brightly. "It might take away from our pride at graduating with honours from Stanford."

"Or make us question how it even happened," Bryce added cheerfully. "If we didn't have our degrees I'd swear it was a sleep deprived hallucination."

"You and me both, buddy."

Ellie, because she still possessed the working braincell of their trio, smiled again. "What's not a hallucination is the time. You're going to be late for work." With that pronouncement, his sister rose from the table and strolled towards the bedrooms presumably to change for the day.

"I really hate being an accountant," Bryce groaned, dropping his head into his hands.

Chuck patted him sympathetically on the back. "You could find another cover job."

"You work at the Buy More, I work at the Buy More," Bryce stated emphatically. "We tried it another way, but it just ended up with me getting shot."

"That's because you thought it was a bright idea to join the CIA."

Bryce's eyes glared at him through his fingers. "Shut up."

.

.

Several hours later, Chuck found himself standing in front of a furious Casey, fake smile beaming at the back of the rudest customer they'd dealt with in a while.

"Just breathe, Casey," Chuck counselled, hoping Casey wasn't going to decide now was a good time to bowl Chuck over and go and pull the rude customer's spine out through his throat.

Casey growled behind him, the gutteral noise rumbling through his throat.

"Or growl," Chuck amended easily. "Growling also works. Very good."

Looking at the twitching muscles in the NSA agent's face, Chuck decided that discretion was really the better part of valour and moved off towards the employees only area of the store. He cut through towards the storage cage, making a quick detour to check on the stock before bothering Bryce, whose text messages were coming increasingly fast in the face of the latest inanities Big Mike expected Bryce to deal with.

"You're not going to believe it," Jeff announced, sitting in front of a computer.

"Oh, you got that server to work," Chuck guessed, stalling so close to his objective.

Jeff grinned over his shoulder. "I got Tara Reid's phone number."

Chuck felt his eyes widen, instinctive dread creeping up his throat. "What have I told you about stalking 'celebrities' online?" he asked, using quotation marks around the word celebrities. "And, by the way, who doesn't have her phone number?" Chuck shook his head, peering at the screen of the laptop. "Is that the Grand Saville's database?"

Jeff craned his head to look up at Chuck. "I can access every guest staying at LA's swankiest hotel." He pointed at the screen, pride drenching his voice. "It's got it all. Credit cards, room numbers, spank-per-view records."

Chuck crossed his arms, resisting the urge to bang his head on the nearest hard surface. "That's super Jeff. Really good work." He came up behind his fellow nerd, pushing his chair away from the laptop. "I'll let the hotel know their computer is ready."

"You're giving away the holy grail," Jeff cried, loud and despairing. "Tara!"

Chuck quickly got to work minimising the windows Jeff had opened, ignoring Jeff's plaintive cry as he rolled down the corridor. "Grand Saville, please don't sue us."

As he was moving to close another window, he heard footsteps behind him, Bryce's voice sarcastically commenting on something or another. Chuck would have loved to have given him his full attention (as Bryce tended to command simply by existing), but his brain chose that moment to flash on a name.

Dmitry Siljack.

Chuck saw a redacted file, something to do with the illegal arms trade, and a photograph. He grabbed a pen from his pocket, quickly scribbling down the name as he flashed again and again and again on the names on the screen.

Yuri S. Gorski. Boris Buturlin. Dmitri Brusilov. Grigory Krylov. Ivan Fyodorov. More and more until Chuck's head was spinning, reeling from the assault on his synapses.

"Man, I'm going to have a headache tomorrow," Chuck groaned, blinking away the afterimage before his eyes.

Bryce, for once, didn't need to ask Chuck what he flashed on. Aside from a muffled curse, the spy didn't say anything at all. He just stared levelly at the computer, hand warm and reassuring as it soothed up and down his spine.

Chuck half turned towards his friend, his attention caught by one final name. Ilsa Trinchina. He saw a CIA file, a handwritten letter addressed to someone named Sugar Bear, images of Casey kissing a woman, and a photograph of the woman herself.

"Ilsa Trinchina," Chuck said, partly for Bryce's benefit and partly to make sense of the information rattling around his brain. "AP photographer, rumoured lover of undercover NSA agent. Whereabouts unknown. Sugar Bear?"

Bryce coughed behind him, hand stalling near the nape of Chuck's neck. "Excuse me?"

Chuck rose from his stoop, Bryce's hand staying exactly where it was. A slow, gleeful smile spread on Chuck's lips. "Sugar Bear's girlfriend is in town."

He laughed, ripping the list from the pad, grinning over his shoulder at a bemused looking Bryce. "Casey's Sugar Bear."

Bryce, bemused as he was, put two and two together quickly. Very quickly, judging by the way that devious smirk spread over his lips. "Oh, I'm going to have so much fun with this," the superspy promised, glee twin to Chuck's shining in his eyes.

"Be nice, Bryce," Chuck said, mostly by rote. "Casey hasn't done anything to annoy you this year."

"No," Bryce conceded agreeably. "But he did manage to actually kill me for a minute there last year, and I haven't really gotten him back for that yet."

"Buddy," Chuck sighed, pretending to be immune to the wickedness dancing in blue, blue eyes. "If you're not going to be nice, I won't let you come with me to tell Casey."

Immediately, Bryce's face took on the most angelic expression Chuck had ever seen. Butter wouldn't melt innocence covered the wicked sparkle in his eyes; his smile soft and easy. "I'll be the soul of good behaviour."

Chuck narrowed his eyes, experience telling him that look on Bryce's face meant nothing but trouble, but he was fairly useless in the face of Bryce Larkin wanting anything from him.

.

With Bryce at his shoulder, Chuck turned back towards the main store, catching Casey as he entered the employee only area. "Casey, wait up!" Chuck called, jogging down the corridor to catch the surly major.

Casey narrowed his eyes at Chuck, undoubtedly clocking the studied innocence with which Bryce ambled towards them. "What is it, Bartowski?" Casey glowered. "I'm on break."

Chuck reached into his pocket for the list of names. "I've just had the mother load of bad guy flashes," he announced, handing Casey the paper.

"Who are they?"

"Mostly Russian," Chuck explained quickly. "All travelling under aliases, fake passports."

"That means they're arms dealers, money launderers, black market smugglers," Casey trailed off, studying the list intently.

"Yeah," Chuck agreed, that pretty much summed up what he'd flashed on. "Apparently, they're all having a douchebag convention down at the Grand Saville."

Casey nodded his acknowledgement of that. "I'll run it up the flagpole, see what command wants us to do."

"Uh, one more thing," Chuck announced before Casey could slip off. "There was another name. One name that I flashed on actually, but I left it - her - off the list."

Casey narrowed his eyes, looking at Chuck as if all his marbles had vanished. "What the hell are you talking about, Bartowski?"

"Does the name Ilsa Trinchina mean anything to you?" Chuck tried to keep a straight face, but he couldn't. "Sugar Bear?"

Casey lunged forward, holding Chuck against the wall by his neck. "You say that name ever again and I will end you."

"Let him go or I'll end you," Bryce growled, eyes boring holes into Casey's back. There wasn't a weapon in Bryce's hand, but in that moment Chuck had the feeling that Bryce didn't need one.

Casey's hands abruptly released, Chuck landing in a pile on the floor. The NSA agent strode away, anger snapping off him, Chuck's vision filled with Bryce crouching beside him.

"You okay, Chuck?" Bryce's voice was as gentle as his eyes were hard, his hands resting lightly on Chuck's knee and shoulder.

"Peachy," Chuck rasped, coughing as he lay there on the floor. "What's his deal?"

"Don't know, don't care," Bryce replied, scowling in the direction Casey had left. "But if he does that again, I'm going to kill him. Interdepartmental cooperation be damned."

Chuck blindly patted Bryce's knee. "Thanks, buddy."

Bryce gave him a smile that almost covered the pulling fury in his eyes. "Anything for you, Chuck."

Chuck flopped himself into a position where Bryce could help him stand. "Wanna come gossip with Sarah?"

"Buddy," Bryce smirked, dusting off his trousers. "It would be my genuine pleasure."

.

.

Sarah was, predictably, awed at the information Chuck imparted. Bryce leaned on the counter beside him, munching on a breakfast corndog like the secret fast food junkie he was. Chuck moved closer to Sarah, tone dropping conspiratorially low.

"Her name is Ilsa Trinchina. Super hot, super sexy, and staying at the Grand Saville as we speak."

"Does Casey know?" Sarah asked, eyes bright with interest.

Bryce's smile turned from politely engaged to icy, Sarah's eyes narrowing in concern.

"Yeah," Chuck agreed slowly. "He almost ripped my head off. It must've been a pretty bad breakup." Chuck shuddered away the sensation of hands on his throat, distracting himself. "You know for the longest time, I always imagined Casey was built like a Ken doll, you know, downstairs."

That drew a genuine laugh from Bryce, Sarah moving back to check on her cover job. "I don't know what kind of woman would go for a guy like Casey."

"There's no accounting for taste," Bryce muttered dryly, idly wiping his fingers in a napkin.

"What do you say we find out?" Chuck asked, devious glee ripping through him. If Casey didn't want them to snoop then he shouldn't have upset Bryce, or threatened Chuck.

Sarah swayed a little forward, tempted.

"Ilsa is a civilian. A foreign national," Chuck persuaded, knowing he only had to convince Sarah - Bryce had always been down for any mischief Chuck wanted to get into. "The Intersect has like nothing on her, except for some love letters that I'll now never be able to scrub out of my brain."

"You want me to go behind Casey's back, reallocate CIA resources and violate this woman's privacy, so you can find out what their story is?" Sarah checked, doing a very bad job of sounding dubious.

"Tell me you're not curious," Chuck grinned.

Sarah's face softened, smile beginning to curl her lips. She didn't need to say yes, Chuck knew she was on board.

"What about you, Bryce?" Sarah asked, something playful in her voice. "Are you going to try and talk us out of violating Casey's privacy?"

"Normally, I'd say let the man's past be," Bryce admitted, an unusual weight to his words. "I've always hated people digging into mine. But," here Bryce's smirk grew to increasingly wicked proportions. "Casey pissed me off, so I'm all in on this."