Fic(s): Second Verse (Same as the First), etc.
A few Chuck/Bryce fills at comment_fic:
Title: Second Verse, Same As the First
Rating: PG
Author’s Note: For this prompt.
Summary: He knows the spy life; knows what it takes. He can’t bear the thought of the CIA taking so much from his friend. Classic Chuck with a twist.
AO3
He’s got his reasons, obviously. He knows the spy life; knows what it does to people. What it takes. He can’t bear the thought of the CIA taking so much from his friend.
He’s being selfish though too, and he knows it. Probably Flemming is right. Probably he’s been rooming with one hell of a potential spy. The best. He knows he has.
He chooses to be selfish. He thinks he deserves at least this. Stanford’s been a vacation. An escape. A little time-out from the life that has been waiting for him pretty much forever and that will all too soon swallow him whole. He deserves to know that he’s done one good thing in the world not spy-related. He deserves to know that his friend - the guy he’s secretly been in love with for some time now - is going to get to live a normal life. Even if Bryce lives that life one day hating Chuck for every moment of it.
Besides. He’s vowed to take on the CIA for what they did to his family. He’s decided to enter the spy game to try and get his parents out of it. What sense would it make then for him to just stand back and let the man he loves get sucked into the same endless trap that the Bartowski’s fell into before Chuck was even born?
He erases the message Flemming left for Bryce and shows up at the Professor’s office when Bryce would have.
Flemming is more than surprised to see Chuck - he’s disturbed. He should be. The CIA doesn’t know about Chuck yet. They don’t know much about Frost or Orion, for all that they won’t stop hunting either of them, so they don’t know that Orion has a son. Chuck is risking a lot by putting himself out there.
But he can’t not.
“I’m sorry, Mr… Bartowski, but I was expecting-”
“I know what you’re expecting. But Bryce Larkin isn’t going to meet with you today. He isn’t going to meet with any CIA recruiter - Ever - if you know what’s good for you. And I wouldn’t do that; I’ve got a gun, too.”
As a matter of fact, Chuck doesn’t. But he sees Flemming’s hand start to slide across his desk, and whether the man’s reaching for a weapon or some sort of trigger for an alarm, Chuck needs to have this conversation with him. He’s hoping a conversation will be enough.
“Who are you?” Flemming asks. His face has changed, from that of a reasonably personable college professor to the carefully blank countenance of a CIA agent.
Chuck smiles just a little. He was hoping they could skip the useless denials he’d thought Flemming might start off with. He likes Flemming even more now that the man has proven himself brighter than the average recruiter. He’s been enjoying the man’s class and had even planned to take Flemming’s Encoded Images course one day (just for laughs - he could avoid any potential danger in doing so by pretending to fail the coursework). Chuck realizes, with a pang, that he’s going to have to withdraw from the class. It would just be too awkward showing up on Monday after essentially threatening Flemming with death or captivity today.
“Have you ever heard of a man named… Orion, Professor Fleming?” Chuck asks in the way of an answer. He knows he can’t be mistaken for his father. Orion’s been a legend since the seventies and Chuck obviously wasn’t a globetrotting super spy in his diapers. Chuck could be mistaken simply as one of Orion’s associates, and that’s what he’s hoping.
Flemming brings both his hands into view. His reaction is exactly what Chuck had hoped for.
“How do you know that name?”
Chuck takes a seat in front of Flemming’s desk. This isn’t really Chuck’s thing. He’s not good at faking… anything. Besides the illusion that he’s a normal guy and not the son of two spies as well as the human prototype of one of the most advanced technologies ever developed. He has to resist wiping his sweaty palms on the front of his jeans and struggle to keep a vaguely amused expression of calm on his face.
“Orion is very curious about your course on Encoded Images. How ever did you come up with such an… original… method of data encryption?”
Flemming blanches. Chuck feels so bad about that. Fear is an acceptable tool for a spy, but not for a Bartowski; while Chuck knows that frightening Flemming is the least extreme way to do what he needs to do, he isn’t enjoying it.
“I-” Flemming’s eyes are all over the place - all over Chuck, looking for that gun Chuck mentioned? He’s probably certain Chuck’s here to do more than talk. “I’ve been cleared to use the course as an evaluative tool for recruitment. I’ve had every aspect of the coursework approved-”
“Approved by Orion? No. In fact, no member of the U.S. government has received Orion’s express permission to use his work, much less for purposes besides the one he intended, and exposing college students to watered-down tidbits of his research? Was not the purpose of Project Omaha, Professor.”
Flemming visibly startles. Chuck’s knowledge of Orion made Flemming wary; learning that Chuck has knowledge of Project Omaha makes Flemming stutter.
“I- You- What does he-”
“A trade. Forget about Bryce Larkin.” Chuck smiles. He can’t smile in a menacing fashion so he just smiles like normal and hopes Flemming thinks that he’s a menacing type of guy pretending not to menace. It seems to work. “And I’ll forget about you.”
Flemming frowns. “Why does Orion-”
“Say the word, Professor, and he’d be happy to come and… explain it to you himself.”
Flemming thinks about that. He doesn’t think long.
“That won’t be necessary.”
“You’ll leave Bryce alone?”
Flemming doesn’t hesitate. “Bryce who?”
Chuck knows better than to think his work here is done, but this is a good start.
[end.]
Title: Without the Spice
Rating: PG-13
Author's Note: For this prompt.
Summary: "You think we need a kink?"
AO3
“Uh… what?”
He doesn’t think he heard that right. Nobody just comes out and asks… that with a smile on his face.
Nobody but Bryce, apparently. When has Bryce ever been less than fearless?
Chuck’s palms instantly turn sweaty and he sets down his controller. If Bryce is just messing around, Chuck’s going to feel stupid for taking this seriously, but it’s Bryce. Chuck can look stupid in front of Bryce, now and again (he’s Chuck, he can’t always help it) and Bryce won’t pick on him about it. Much.
“What do I think about…”
“Spanking, Chuck,” Bryce says, with the hint of a laugh in his voice. “Or, you know, some other kind of kink. Bondage. Voyeurism. Exhibitionism…”
“Okay, stop.” If Chuck blushes any brighter he’s going to bust a blood vessel or something. There are so many directions his thoughts are taking, but he tosses his tongue into the mix and latches onto just one. “You think we need a kink?”
Okay, it’s pathetic - he knows; Bryce mentions spicing things up and Chuck’s insecurity takes him straight to questioning what’s wrong with sex without the spice.
Bryce’s smile softens. He knows Chuck so well. “It’s not about need, Chuck. Our sexlife is great. I’m just saying… It could be fun to try something new.”
“Something like spanking,” Chuck repeats. He knows Bryce too. Bryce might have tacked on a few other options to his suggestion when Chuck started to react, but he’s obviously partial to the first idea he brought up.
And he doesn’t hide it. Bryce’s smile becomes sheepish and widens into a grin - one of those big, dimpled grins that - combined with a flutter of his lashes and a sparkle in those blue, blue eyes - never fails to win Chuck over. Whatever Bryce is suggesting.
Chuck’s heart pounds. He’d do anything for Bryce. He’ll do anything. But, honestly? Chuck doesn’t blush because he’s never considered something kinky before. The thought of- of being spanked doesn’t shock him because his mind is just too vanilla to picture it.
It simply isn’t the kind of thing Chuck thinks he’d be into. He knows that spanking doesn’t have to involve any serious pain - and that he could trust Bryce even if it did - but ’serious’ is a relative term and Chuck doesn’t want to embarrass himself.
“Yeah,” Bryce says.
“I…” Chuck swallows. “I guess we could try-”
“Spanking me, Chuck,” Bryce says before Chuck can force out an agreement. “It could be fun to try something like you spanking me.”
Chuck’s heart bum-ba-ba-bums in his chest. “Really?” Chuck just assumed-
Bryce is so… butch. Or “alpha”, if you want to call it that. So confident and headstrong. So decisive. Chuck would have thought that Bryce would want to be in control in a situation like the one’s he’s suggesting. He’s the one to top, more often than not, when he and Chuck go to bed.
“Sure. Giving up control now and then can be fun,” Bryce says, reading Chuck’s mind. His smile is full of mischief. “You know that.”
Chuck is really blushing now. Chuck does tend to get a little hotter under the collar when Bryce gets forceful during sex. Not rough, necessarily, but commanding. When Chuck has considered doing something kinky, he’s wondered what it would be like if they took that tone of demand-and-submit to a different level. Like, if Bryce did get a little rough or if Chuck let Bryce tie him up (that “bondage” that Bryce mentioned a moment ago.)
Could Chuck enjoy the opposite kind of kink as well? Taking charge - at least enough to bend Bryce over and spank him?
Chuck’s dick, moving slowly from aware to interested - and straight on to impatient - in Chuck’s jeans, says that yes, Chuck certainly could.
“O- Okay.”
Bryce grins and then laughs. Chuck’s heart sinks for a second, thinking maybe that this was a joke - and here comes the punch line. But then Bryce leans over and kisses Chuck, hard, and says, with their mouths all but still touching, “Excellent. Tomorrow sound like soon enough?”
Right now sounds perfect. But they’ve been playing video games all night and tomorrow they both have early morning classes. And Chuck’s pretty sure that the first time they try out a new kink shouldn’t be a quickie. He wonders why Bryce didn’t bring up this conversation earlier, but then realizes that Bryce must have been uncertain as to how Chuck would respond. Perhaps he didn’t want to face a long, awkward evening after a disappointing rejection if Chuck said no.
Chuck smiles. So maybe Bryce isn’t totally fearless and confident all of the time.
“Sounds great.”
[End. Sorry :p Couldn't think of how to write the actual spanking!]
Title: Questionable
Rating: PG-13
Author's Note: For this prompt: Sometimes he wonders if he's dating some sort of cyborg.
AO3
He sorta, kinda talked about it with Jill.
If, by “talked about it”, you mean he lied through his teeth and said “I… don’t really get that” when Jill said (during a Terminator/Terminator II mini-movie marathon), “I would so do Schwarzenegger in this film.”
Yeah, Arnold was all buff and (occasionally) naked and Austrian, but- He was also murderous for, like, fifty-percent of the franchise. He was totally cold in the first film, unflinchingly inhuman. How could that be hot?
Chuck kept a pillow over his lap until he and Jill had been making out long enough to warrant the hard-on he was hiding, and then he let her change the subject.
“Badasses are totally fuckable, Chuck,” Jill said at a later date. “And- I don’t know. Don’t you think his ‘do whatever it takes‘, steely-eyed attitude was a little sexy?” Chuck argued that you can’t really say the Terminator had an attitude - just programming - but looking back he thinks he probably should be less surprised that Jill turned out to be an evil double-agent.
And that the ‘do whatever it takes‘, steely-eyed routine - as performed by Bryce Larkin, world-class spy and G-man assassin - has become one of Chuck’s biggest turn-on’s.
Chuck totally got what Jill was saying about Schwarzenegger. He likes his men a little less muscle-y… But, yeah. There’s something about a hot guy who could (not necessarily would, but could) easily hunt you down across time and space and decimate a small army in the process that really gets the blood pumping.
It’s just-
Not that easy being in a relationship with said guy.
“Seriously? We’re seriously gonna do this right now?”
“Get out of my way, Chuck.”
The bad guys look on, wary and curious by turns, as he and Bryce air out their differences.
“No. Look, he said he doesn’t know, alright? Don’t you think he would have given us the code before now if he had it?”
They’re trapped in a vault. They’ve got enough oxygen left for two people to make it for one hour. Help is forty-five minutes away and there are four men still breathing out of the six that got trapped in here with Bryce and Chuck.
There are two dead bodies lying in one corner and an unconscious one lying, bound, near them. Bryce and Chuck have the other three bad guys, bound with their hands behind their backs, on their knees in the center of the vault.
Bryce’s gun is out and the safety’s off. Chuck is all that stands between him and his blowing the head off of the bad guy who keeps insisting that he doesn’t know the code to disable the vault’s security system.
“No…” Bryce says calmly, though his eyes say something different - cool but still in a way that speaks of violence more loudly than anything else. “I don’t think any of them is going to cooperate until you stop interfering with my interrogation.”
“Interrogation? Oh, so that’s what this is. Excuse me, but it seems more like an excuse to shoot somebody.”
Bryce’s expression doesn’t change. “There are six people in this vault,” he tells Chuck, “We’ve only got enough air in here for one. Do the math.”
The bad guys start talking all at once. “Shut up,” Bryce and Chuck say simultaneously - Bryce with a wave of his gun.
Chuck’s done the math. And if it comes down to it… Once they’ve exhausted every other option, he’ll do whatever he has to do to make sure that Bryce makes it out of this. But so far they’ve barely even tried. And Chuck knows that if they do what Bryce is suggesting and then find a way to rescue themselves, with time (and oxygen) left on the clock… Chuck will never forgive himself.
No other spy really understands Chuck’s aversion to killing - even Bryce - but surely Bryce can understand this?
“I’m just saying…” Chuck reasons, “that maybe we could try a couple other things before we start executing people. That’s all.”
They ran out of tranq darts two floors and three skirmishes ago (hence the dead bodies in the corner) but the Intersect knows more than one way to incapacitate a person without killing him. And it’s not like Chuck and Bryce aren’t both quasi-computer geniuses… Surely there’s a chance they could disable the security system on their own.
“I’m not-”
Chuck sees the movement in the reflective surface of the vault’s drawer-lined wall, over Bryce’s shoulder. While he and Bryce were arguing, their three captives somehow worked their way out of their bonds.
Chuck pushes Bryce back, out of range of the bad guy lunging for him and Chuck, and doubles over, pushing off the ground with his hands and kicking backwards, hitting two of the men lunging in his direction. Chuck can hear Bryce grappling with the third bad guy as he handles his own side of the fight, but - keyed up by their argument, worried about their predicament and that math Bryce was talking about, not to mention what (factoring in Bryce’s self-sacrificing tendencies) Bryce might plan to do about it - Chuck sorta gets carried away.
It’s definitely ironic that Bryce has to stop Chuck from beating a guy senseless moments after Chuck was just arguing for the sake of this guy’s life.
“Chuck! Chuck, enough.”
Finally, Chuck snaps to. As if his punches were the only thing keeping the man on his feet, the bad guy falls to the floor - unconscious like the rest of his buddies.
“Oh! I- I’m sorry. Bryce, I-”
Bryce’s eyes are dark and heated as he strides to Chuck’s side, stepping over the bodies in his path.
Chuck is horrified. The serious look on Bryce’s face… If they don’t make it out of this vault, he doesn’t want his last moments with the man that he loves to have been spent pissing Bryce off.
“I-”
Bryce holsters the gun and takes Chuck’s face in his hands and swallows Chuck’s words with his mouth, lips hard and tongue insistent as he kisses Chuck quiet.
It’s not just the thinning air that makes Chuck breathless.
“What-”
Bryce grins, devilish and handsome. “God you’re hot when you kick ass,” he says.
Chuck feels himself begin to blush. “Well, I-”
Bryce kisses him again.
As it so happens, they do get out of the vault before the air runs out. Their cavalry’s projected ETA didn’t take into consideration Casey’s determination or Sarah’s frankly horrendous driving.
It’s just a good thing the team doesn’t arrive any faster than they manage. Casey’s caught Bryce and Chuck in a compromised position once before, and nobody wants to repeat that debacle.
Chuck supposes he shares his taste for pretty badasses with questionable morals with more than just his evil ex-girlfriend.
[end.]
Title: Second Verse, Same As the First
Rating: PG
Author’s Note: For this prompt.
Summary: He knows the spy life; knows what it takes. He can’t bear the thought of the CIA taking so much from his friend. Classic Chuck with a twist.
AO3
He’s got his reasons, obviously. He knows the spy life; knows what it does to people. What it takes. He can’t bear the thought of the CIA taking so much from his friend.
He’s being selfish though too, and he knows it. Probably Flemming is right. Probably he’s been rooming with one hell of a potential spy. The best. He knows he has.
He chooses to be selfish. He thinks he deserves at least this. Stanford’s been a vacation. An escape. A little time-out from the life that has been waiting for him pretty much forever and that will all too soon swallow him whole. He deserves to know that he’s done one good thing in the world not spy-related. He deserves to know that his friend - the guy he’s secretly been in love with for some time now - is going to get to live a normal life. Even if Bryce lives that life one day hating Chuck for every moment of it.
Besides. He’s vowed to take on the CIA for what they did to his family. He’s decided to enter the spy game to try and get his parents out of it. What sense would it make then for him to just stand back and let the man he loves get sucked into the same endless trap that the Bartowski’s fell into before Chuck was even born?
He erases the message Flemming left for Bryce and shows up at the Professor’s office when Bryce would have.
Flemming is more than surprised to see Chuck - he’s disturbed. He should be. The CIA doesn’t know about Chuck yet. They don’t know much about Frost or Orion, for all that they won’t stop hunting either of them, so they don’t know that Orion has a son. Chuck is risking a lot by putting himself out there.
But he can’t not.
“I’m sorry, Mr… Bartowski, but I was expecting-”
“I know what you’re expecting. But Bryce Larkin isn’t going to meet with you today. He isn’t going to meet with any CIA recruiter - Ever - if you know what’s good for you. And I wouldn’t do that; I’ve got a gun, too.”
As a matter of fact, Chuck doesn’t. But he sees Flemming’s hand start to slide across his desk, and whether the man’s reaching for a weapon or some sort of trigger for an alarm, Chuck needs to have this conversation with him. He’s hoping a conversation will be enough.
“Who are you?” Flemming asks. His face has changed, from that of a reasonably personable college professor to the carefully blank countenance of a CIA agent.
Chuck smiles just a little. He was hoping they could skip the useless denials he’d thought Flemming might start off with. He likes Flemming even more now that the man has proven himself brighter than the average recruiter. He’s been enjoying the man’s class and had even planned to take Flemming’s Encoded Images course one day (just for laughs - he could avoid any potential danger in doing so by pretending to fail the coursework). Chuck realizes, with a pang, that he’s going to have to withdraw from the class. It would just be too awkward showing up on Monday after essentially threatening Flemming with death or captivity today.
“Have you ever heard of a man named… Orion, Professor Fleming?” Chuck asks in the way of an answer. He knows he can’t be mistaken for his father. Orion’s been a legend since the seventies and Chuck obviously wasn’t a globetrotting super spy in his diapers. Chuck could be mistaken simply as one of Orion’s associates, and that’s what he’s hoping.
Flemming brings both his hands into view. His reaction is exactly what Chuck had hoped for.
“How do you know that name?”
Chuck takes a seat in front of Flemming’s desk. This isn’t really Chuck’s thing. He’s not good at faking… anything. Besides the illusion that he’s a normal guy and not the son of two spies as well as the human prototype of one of the most advanced technologies ever developed. He has to resist wiping his sweaty palms on the front of his jeans and struggle to keep a vaguely amused expression of calm on his face.
“Orion is very curious about your course on Encoded Images. How ever did you come up with such an… original… method of data encryption?”
Flemming blanches. Chuck feels so bad about that. Fear is an acceptable tool for a spy, but not for a Bartowski; while Chuck knows that frightening Flemming is the least extreme way to do what he needs to do, he isn’t enjoying it.
“I-” Flemming’s eyes are all over the place - all over Chuck, looking for that gun Chuck mentioned? He’s probably certain Chuck’s here to do more than talk. “I’ve been cleared to use the course as an evaluative tool for recruitment. I’ve had every aspect of the coursework approved-”
“Approved by Orion? No. In fact, no member of the U.S. government has received Orion’s express permission to use his work, much less for purposes besides the one he intended, and exposing college students to watered-down tidbits of his research? Was not the purpose of Project Omaha, Professor.”
Flemming visibly startles. Chuck’s knowledge of Orion made Flemming wary; learning that Chuck has knowledge of Project Omaha makes Flemming stutter.
“I- You- What does he-”
“A trade. Forget about Bryce Larkin.” Chuck smiles. He can’t smile in a menacing fashion so he just smiles like normal and hopes Flemming thinks that he’s a menacing type of guy pretending not to menace. It seems to work. “And I’ll forget about you.”
Flemming frowns. “Why does Orion-”
“Say the word, Professor, and he’d be happy to come and… explain it to you himself.”
Flemming thinks about that. He doesn’t think long.
“That won’t be necessary.”
“You’ll leave Bryce alone?”
Flemming doesn’t hesitate. “Bryce who?”
Chuck knows better than to think his work here is done, but this is a good start.
[end.]
Title: Without the Spice
Rating: PG-13
Author's Note: For this prompt.
Summary: "You think we need a kink?"
AO3
“Uh… what?”
He doesn’t think he heard that right. Nobody just comes out and asks… that with a smile on his face.
Nobody but Bryce, apparently. When has Bryce ever been less than fearless?
Chuck’s palms instantly turn sweaty and he sets down his controller. If Bryce is just messing around, Chuck’s going to feel stupid for taking this seriously, but it’s Bryce. Chuck can look stupid in front of Bryce, now and again (he’s Chuck, he can’t always help it) and Bryce won’t pick on him about it. Much.
“What do I think about…”
“Spanking, Chuck,” Bryce says, with the hint of a laugh in his voice. “Or, you know, some other kind of kink. Bondage. Voyeurism. Exhibitionism…”
“Okay, stop.” If Chuck blushes any brighter he’s going to bust a blood vessel or something. There are so many directions his thoughts are taking, but he tosses his tongue into the mix and latches onto just one. “You think we need a kink?”
Okay, it’s pathetic - he knows; Bryce mentions spicing things up and Chuck’s insecurity takes him straight to questioning what’s wrong with sex without the spice.
Bryce’s smile softens. He knows Chuck so well. “It’s not about need, Chuck. Our sexlife is great. I’m just saying… It could be fun to try something new.”
“Something like spanking,” Chuck repeats. He knows Bryce too. Bryce might have tacked on a few other options to his suggestion when Chuck started to react, but he’s obviously partial to the first idea he brought up.
And he doesn’t hide it. Bryce’s smile becomes sheepish and widens into a grin - one of those big, dimpled grins that - combined with a flutter of his lashes and a sparkle in those blue, blue eyes - never fails to win Chuck over. Whatever Bryce is suggesting.
Chuck’s heart pounds. He’d do anything for Bryce. He’ll do anything. But, honestly? Chuck doesn’t blush because he’s never considered something kinky before. The thought of- of being spanked doesn’t shock him because his mind is just too vanilla to picture it.
It simply isn’t the kind of thing Chuck thinks he’d be into. He knows that spanking doesn’t have to involve any serious pain - and that he could trust Bryce even if it did - but ’serious’ is a relative term and Chuck doesn’t want to embarrass himself.
“Yeah,” Bryce says.
“I…” Chuck swallows. “I guess we could try-”
“Spanking me, Chuck,” Bryce says before Chuck can force out an agreement. “It could be fun to try something like you spanking me.”
Chuck’s heart bum-ba-ba-bums in his chest. “Really?” Chuck just assumed-
Bryce is so… butch. Or “alpha”, if you want to call it that. So confident and headstrong. So decisive. Chuck would have thought that Bryce would want to be in control in a situation like the one’s he’s suggesting. He’s the one to top, more often than not, when he and Chuck go to bed.
“Sure. Giving up control now and then can be fun,” Bryce says, reading Chuck’s mind. His smile is full of mischief. “You know that.”
Chuck is really blushing now. Chuck does tend to get a little hotter under the collar when Bryce gets forceful during sex. Not rough, necessarily, but commanding. When Chuck has considered doing something kinky, he’s wondered what it would be like if they took that tone of demand-and-submit to a different level. Like, if Bryce did get a little rough or if Chuck let Bryce tie him up (that “bondage” that Bryce mentioned a moment ago.)
Could Chuck enjoy the opposite kind of kink as well? Taking charge - at least enough to bend Bryce over and spank him?
Chuck’s dick, moving slowly from aware to interested - and straight on to impatient - in Chuck’s jeans, says that yes, Chuck certainly could.
“O- Okay.”
Bryce grins and then laughs. Chuck’s heart sinks for a second, thinking maybe that this was a joke - and here comes the punch line. But then Bryce leans over and kisses Chuck, hard, and says, with their mouths all but still touching, “Excellent. Tomorrow sound like soon enough?”
Right now sounds perfect. But they’ve been playing video games all night and tomorrow they both have early morning classes. And Chuck’s pretty sure that the first time they try out a new kink shouldn’t be a quickie. He wonders why Bryce didn’t bring up this conversation earlier, but then realizes that Bryce must have been uncertain as to how Chuck would respond. Perhaps he didn’t want to face a long, awkward evening after a disappointing rejection if Chuck said no.
Chuck smiles. So maybe Bryce isn’t totally fearless and confident all of the time.
“Sounds great.”
[End. Sorry :p Couldn't think of how to write the actual spanking!]
Title: Questionable
Rating: PG-13
Author's Note: For this prompt: Sometimes he wonders if he's dating some sort of cyborg.
AO3
He sorta, kinda talked about it with Jill.
If, by “talked about it”, you mean he lied through his teeth and said “I… don’t really get that” when Jill said (during a Terminator/Terminator II mini-movie marathon), “I would so do Schwarzenegger in this film.”
Yeah, Arnold was all buff and (occasionally) naked and Austrian, but- He was also murderous for, like, fifty-percent of the franchise. He was totally cold in the first film, unflinchingly inhuman. How could that be hot?
Chuck kept a pillow over his lap until he and Jill had been making out long enough to warrant the hard-on he was hiding, and then he let her change the subject.
“Badasses are totally fuckable, Chuck,” Jill said at a later date. “And- I don’t know. Don’t you think his ‘do whatever it takes‘, steely-eyed attitude was a little sexy?” Chuck argued that you can’t really say the Terminator had an attitude - just programming - but looking back he thinks he probably should be less surprised that Jill turned out to be an evil double-agent.
And that the ‘do whatever it takes‘, steely-eyed routine - as performed by Bryce Larkin, world-class spy and G-man assassin - has become one of Chuck’s biggest turn-on’s.
Chuck totally got what Jill was saying about Schwarzenegger. He likes his men a little less muscle-y… But, yeah. There’s something about a hot guy who could (not necessarily would, but could) easily hunt you down across time and space and decimate a small army in the process that really gets the blood pumping.
It’s just-
Not that easy being in a relationship with said guy.
“Seriously? We’re seriously gonna do this right now?”
“Get out of my way, Chuck.”
The bad guys look on, wary and curious by turns, as he and Bryce air out their differences.
“No. Look, he said he doesn’t know, alright? Don’t you think he would have given us the code before now if he had it?”
They’re trapped in a vault. They’ve got enough oxygen left for two people to make it for one hour. Help is forty-five minutes away and there are four men still breathing out of the six that got trapped in here with Bryce and Chuck.
There are two dead bodies lying in one corner and an unconscious one lying, bound, near them. Bryce and Chuck have the other three bad guys, bound with their hands behind their backs, on their knees in the center of the vault.
Bryce’s gun is out and the safety’s off. Chuck is all that stands between him and his blowing the head off of the bad guy who keeps insisting that he doesn’t know the code to disable the vault’s security system.
“No…” Bryce says calmly, though his eyes say something different - cool but still in a way that speaks of violence more loudly than anything else. “I don’t think any of them is going to cooperate until you stop interfering with my interrogation.”
“Interrogation? Oh, so that’s what this is. Excuse me, but it seems more like an excuse to shoot somebody.”
Bryce’s expression doesn’t change. “There are six people in this vault,” he tells Chuck, “We’ve only got enough air in here for one. Do the math.”
The bad guys start talking all at once. “Shut up,” Bryce and Chuck say simultaneously - Bryce with a wave of his gun.
Chuck’s done the math. And if it comes down to it… Once they’ve exhausted every other option, he’ll do whatever he has to do to make sure that Bryce makes it out of this. But so far they’ve barely even tried. And Chuck knows that if they do what Bryce is suggesting and then find a way to rescue themselves, with time (and oxygen) left on the clock… Chuck will never forgive himself.
No other spy really understands Chuck’s aversion to killing - even Bryce - but surely Bryce can understand this?
“I’m just saying…” Chuck reasons, “that maybe we could try a couple other things before we start executing people. That’s all.”
They ran out of tranq darts two floors and three skirmishes ago (hence the dead bodies in the corner) but the Intersect knows more than one way to incapacitate a person without killing him. And it’s not like Chuck and Bryce aren’t both quasi-computer geniuses… Surely there’s a chance they could disable the security system on their own.
“I’m not-”
Chuck sees the movement in the reflective surface of the vault’s drawer-lined wall, over Bryce’s shoulder. While he and Bryce were arguing, their three captives somehow worked their way out of their bonds.
Chuck pushes Bryce back, out of range of the bad guy lunging for him and Chuck, and doubles over, pushing off the ground with his hands and kicking backwards, hitting two of the men lunging in his direction. Chuck can hear Bryce grappling with the third bad guy as he handles his own side of the fight, but - keyed up by their argument, worried about their predicament and that math Bryce was talking about, not to mention what (factoring in Bryce’s self-sacrificing tendencies) Bryce might plan to do about it - Chuck sorta gets carried away.
It’s definitely ironic that Bryce has to stop Chuck from beating a guy senseless moments after Chuck was just arguing for the sake of this guy’s life.
“Chuck! Chuck, enough.”
Finally, Chuck snaps to. As if his punches were the only thing keeping the man on his feet, the bad guy falls to the floor - unconscious like the rest of his buddies.
“Oh! I- I’m sorry. Bryce, I-”
Bryce’s eyes are dark and heated as he strides to Chuck’s side, stepping over the bodies in his path.
Chuck is horrified. The serious look on Bryce’s face… If they don’t make it out of this vault, he doesn’t want his last moments with the man that he loves to have been spent pissing Bryce off.
“I-”
Bryce holsters the gun and takes Chuck’s face in his hands and swallows Chuck’s words with his mouth, lips hard and tongue insistent as he kisses Chuck quiet.
It’s not just the thinning air that makes Chuck breathless.
“What-”
Bryce grins, devilish and handsome. “God you’re hot when you kick ass,” he says.
Chuck feels himself begin to blush. “Well, I-”
Bryce kisses him again.
As it so happens, they do get out of the vault before the air runs out. Their cavalry’s projected ETA didn’t take into consideration Casey’s determination or Sarah’s frankly horrendous driving.
It’s just a good thing the team doesn’t arrive any faster than they manage. Casey’s caught Bryce and Chuck in a compromised position once before, and nobody wants to repeat that debacle.
Chuck supposes he shares his taste for pretty badasses with questionable morals with more than just his evil ex-girlfriend.
[end.]