A/N: So this happened. Wasn't planning on writing this story. Like at all. But then the little germ of an idea got in this head o' mine and... well... here we are. Thanks rightfully go out to Frea O'scanlin for whipping up the awesome cover. And also to new Beta awesome person Aerox.

Chapter 1:

USRV Nautilus

North Atlantic

41o43' N, 49o56' W

Chuck staggered onto the deck of the research vessel in dire straits. He'd awoken, as had become usual thanks to the rough seas, horribly seasick. Unusually, Sarah had been nowhere to be seen. Granted, she had never been exactly sympathetic to his plight. In point of fact, she'd been mostly amused by it until he'd nearly ralphed on her shoes the day before. But today was the day, and he guessed Sarah had woke up early to pester the crew about something.

He found her coming out of the tower and waved her down. She grinned and strolled over easily, despite the heaving waves. Sarah looked him over expectantly. "Well, I guess you haven't puked up a lung yet. That's good at least. Feeling any better?"

"Not really. I slept better last night; I think we hit a lull or something?"

"Yeah, they're expecting it to finish clearing off pretty soon. Once we get down to three foot seas we can head out."

"That doesn't seem likely. What are we at now, fifteen?"

"Four."

"That can't be right..." Chuck said, glaring out at the ocean.

"There's a laser system aboard that checks that sort of thing down to the millimeter. I'm pretty sure."

Chuck turned the glare on Sarah, and she grinned and tossed her head to ger her windblown hair out of her eyes. He opened his mouth to complain about that sort of unnecessary cuteness this early in the morning, when his cPhone rang.

After their stint on a deserted island and the bullet-stopping demise of his last phone, Chuck had used some of his half of the reward money to upgrade. It didn't look like an upgrade, of course. People now constantly made fun of his phone, as well as the matching one he'd built for Sarah. His old phone had only gotten the occasional odd glance. The new one was nearly the size of an early '80s 'brick' cell phone, but it packed a lot of functionality into the extra room. For one thing, it was satellite capable, and had nearly twice the processing power of any other smartphone in existence. Not only that, but it was waterproof, shockproof, bulletproof (this time it'd stop most rifle rounds), and blastproof (for a certain level of blast). It also had a folding crank handle for charging built into the side opposite of the satellite antenna. Chuck wasn't going to get stranded on any desert island and unable to call for help ever again.

Which had its drawbacks at the moment. Without his new phone, Chuck would have been nearly unreachable out here in the North Atlantic. Chuck glanced at the caller id and sighed.

"Hang on, I've got to take this," Chuck said, folding out the sat antenna and flipping the unlock slider. "What's up Morg?"

"I just got my copy of Wired magazine. Is there anything you'd like to share with the class?"

"Oh, right. Surprise, buddy."

"'Chuck Bartowski, Hipster Hacker Icon and Amateur Treasure Hunter?' You didn't think I'd want to know my friend was about to become a celebrity?"

"Hipster? Icon?" Chuck said. "I wouldn't go that far..."

"You're on the frakking cover of Wired!" Morgan said. " A heads-up would have been nice."

"Whoa, whoa, wait. They said it was just a little puff-piece. I'm the cover story? Okay, I get why you're mad."

"You and Sarah both."

Chuck groaned. He remembered that picture now, the pair of them posing with a treasure chest full of faux-gold pieces. (The real gold they'd recovered on their most recent treasure hunt was in the Miami Museum of Natural Science) "Look, Morgan I really can't talk now. We're about to board the submersible."

"I'm sorry, what? It sounded like you just said... submersible. But that'd be just downright nutty..."

"It's Sarah's birthday, we're going down to the Titanic."

"No, seriously."

"She hadda hundred grand burning a hole in her pocket."

"I hate you both."

"See ya when we get back, gotta go! Sarah's tapping her foot impatiently and crossing her arms at me."

"I was doing no such thing," Sarah protested once he'd disconnected.

Chuck merely shrugged. "You want me to talk to Morgan all day?"

"No," she said after a moment's thought. "Your other girlfriend has been taking up a lot more of your time than I expected."

"Morgan is not my girlfriend."

Sarah grinned. "Prove it."

There was only one way to deal with that particular grin. Chuck grabbed her and kissed her as thoroughly as he knew how. Sarah wrapped her arms around his neck and held him close, pressing herself against him, clinging like, to continue the nautical theme, a barnacle.

It was the applause that broke them apart finally. Chuck shrugged his shoulders trying to shield his sudden flush from sight as he pulled away. Sarah wore a matching blush and hid her face in his chest. Someone let out a wolf-whistle. "Great," Sarah said. "Bob Ballard just whistled at us."

"I'm sure Dr. Ballard has more important things to do before the..." Sarah put a finger to his lips, and nudged his head to the side. "Bob Ballard is taking a cell phone video of us."

"We're already on the cover of Wired," Sarah said. "What's an internet meme on top of that?"

Chuck shook his head and pulled away from her lips before she could capture him a second time. Sarah sighed and pressed her forehead against his cheek while he turned and called out to their esteemed tour-guide. "Is it time to go, then?"

"You can finish up... whatever it is you two were doing, first," Dr. Ballard said, grinning and putting away his phone. "Today looks like it's going to stay clear."

Sarah shook her head. "We're ready whenever you are, Dr. Ballard."

"Please, call me Bob," he said.

Sarah was mortified. "I could never do that!" she said. "You earned the title."

"Well, I only found the Titanic and the Lusitania. No sunken Dutch schooner full of gold."

"You heard about that?"

"News travels fast in our profession," he said. "If you hadn't bought your way aboard this cruise, I was ready to extend an invitation."

"Well, thanks a lot for waiting as long as you did," Sarah glared at him, but it was only about half-strength. "The ticket price was a little steep." She wasn't really angry, Chuck was sure. The price actually helped fund the expeditions now. With research dollars drying up, bringing out pay-passengers was just enough to make up their budget shortfalls.

"Don't think everyone doesn't appreciate it. In fact, you've been much more helpful than any non-crew member we've brought out. By about a factor of thirty. Usually we have to basically bar our esteemed guests from everything but their cabin and the mess. That's why I'm going to take you two down myself today. Follow me to the Ahab."

"Really? The submersible is named Ahab? Isn't that a touch... inauspicious?"

"Nice choice of words," Ballard laughed. "No. I already found my white whale. Now we're just picking at its bones, really."

Sarah frowned. "That's one way of putting it."

"You're not one of those who thinks we should just leave the wreck alone, are you?" Ballard said. "There's a lot we can still learn."

"No, I understand the value of your work out here. But I can see both sides, I guess."

"You know, I've been down to her, dozens of times. And in all those trips we've never discovered any remains. Even the bones are long since dissolved at this pressure and water salinity. There could be some bodies in sealed compartments. But we've all agreed to leave those be. Even the Russian teams agreed to that, and they're usually the contrariest bunch of... people... I've ever met."

The interior of the submersible was... cozy would be putting the best possible face on things. Besides them and Dr. Ballard there was one other seat, filled by one of the researchers. Every spare cubic foot was crammed with instruments. There were a couple of tiny windows, barely four inches wide each. Dr. Ballard explained most of their navigation was done using remote cameras on the exterior of the minisub. Even those tiny four-inch windows were made of nearly a full 12 inch thickness of Lexan. If they'd wanted a big enough window to actually see enough to navigate through, they'd have needed a thoroughly impractical thickness even of the new high-strength polymers. Almost as soon as the water closed over them, radio communications with the ship became garbled. By the time they were a football field's length under water, Ballard switched the radio off entirely as a waste of power. It was ominously quiet, except for the constant reassuring hum from the AC recirculating their air supply.

Sarah read off the depth gauge as they descended, two thousand feet, three, four. Now a full mile under water. Chuck fought down the shivers. He could do the math on the water pressure above them as well as anyone. Sarah patted his knee.

"If it makes you feel any better, in the event of a structural failure we'd never even feel it."

Chuck frowned at her. "What do you mean?"

"At this depth, the sub would collapse in less time than human nerve conduction velocity. We'd be dead before we could even really notice there was something wrong."

"She's not wrong."

"That's supposed to make me feel better?" Chuck looked around the cramped interior in a momentary panic.

"Not really," Ballard said with a shrug. "But there's nothing to be nervous about. We go over this thing with a fine-tooth comb before we commit to a dive. The space shuttle checklist is actually about twenty steps shorter than ours."

They finally came to a stop better than two miles under the surface, and deployed the RV, which would do most of the maneuvering. The smaller robotic sub was both more agile, and less expensive. If the RV got stuck the loss would only be a couple million. If the Ahab got stuck they'd lose Sarah Walker who was priceless. That was how Chuck thought about the situation, anyway. The research crew, and probably Sarah for that matter, were nearly as attached to Dr. Ballard. The RV still had to have a tether to transmit telemetry from the bigger sub, but having it attached to the main submersible instead of the surface ship cut down on a lot of expenses. Also, if the RV got its tether caught on something, both the RV and the Ahab could maneuver to try and free the snag.

Chuck looked out the viewport into the inky black void at the bottom of the world, and his hand found Sarah's, their fingers interlacing almost automatically. "Not much of a view..."

"Give me a second to see whether the lights held up. Sometimes we lose a few..."

Then there was light, and the wreck loomed out of the dark at them. Chuck squeezed himself close to the wall of the submersible, making himself as small as possible so Sarah could lean across him and take a look out the tiny view-port. It was different from seeing it on a TV screen, even through the distortion from the heavy poly-carbonate window. It was somehow haunting and beautiful and inspiring all at once. Sarah rested her head on his shoulder briefly and gave a contented sigh. "I wanted to do this since I was a little girl."

Chuck grinned and kissed the top of her head.

Dr. Ballard even let Sarah work the manipulator arm, and she managed to recover a china teacup. But they wouldn't let her keep it, no matter how much Chuck wheedled.

"You know, you really should let me pay you back for this trip," Chuck said later back in their cabin. "It's your birthday, remember."

"100,000, is way too much to expect you to spend on a birthday present, Chuck. Even with our recent good fortune. We've only been together for like six months."

"Eight."

"Whatever, I'm not counting."

"So, you're not expecting anything special on our anniversary?"

"Well, I wouldn't go that far..."

"Aha! A trap, I knew it."

"Yes, a trap," she rolled her eyes, "Like I'm in any position to spring a trap right now."

They were squeezed into Sarah's bunk and Chuck was giving her a massage. Chuck had somehow managed to smuggle the hot oils through airport security. There certainly hadn't been time for him to buy them before they boarded ship.

"You're tensing up again," Chuck said, fingers rubbing the knot between her shoulder blades.

"Just trying to figure out how you smuggled the oil through security."

"Smuggle? Moi?"

"I'm gonna figure it out..."

"FedEx," Chuck said, "I mailed it ahead."

"Ugh, that's so simple," Sarah grumbled. "That's actually kind of disappointing. So no trickery or smuggling involved at all?"

"Sorry," he said.

"Mmmdon't be..." Sarah murmured. "You give the best massages. I'll forgive a lack of trickery." She glanced over her shoulder at him. "This time."

"Well, in that case..." Chuck said. He deftly undid the clasp of her bra.

"Hey!" Sarah rolled over hurriedly, holding her bra tight over her chest.

"I thought you wanted more trickery?"

"How's this for trickery," Sarah growled, tossed the bra away and somehow flipped him over onto his back, reversing their positions without spilling them out onto the floor. She pinned his hands easily over his head.

Chuck gave her the Bartowski eyebrow dance. "And it isn't even my birthday."

Sarah rolled her eyes. "Shut up and kiss me."

London, England

Heathrow Airport

The last two days of their stay aboard the research vessel were something approaching anticlimactic. And now they were in a cab heading to the airport and back home to LA. Sarah was trying to get in the right frame of mind for being back in the States. She liked her coursework at the UCLA marine biology department, and her job teaching scuba, but she found herself missing the hunt already. She read the article in Wired in the taxi ride to the airport and reminisced about their most recent exploits. After all that business in the Philippines with the island and whatever that was with the CIA, it'd been fun and refreshing to go out on a simple treasure hunt for a four hundred year old Dutch schooner lost off the Florida coast with a hold full of stolen Spanish gold. True, the article left out the part where she and Chuck had been kidnapped by the gangsters piggybacking the treasure hunt, driven into a swamp in the trunk of a car, and held at gunpoint moments from being killed. That took some of the romance out of the event, but they'd managed to escape thanks to Chuck's ingenuity, stopped the bad guys, recovered millions in bullion and made a hefty profit in the process.

That had been almost three whole months ago, and now her birthday present to herself had fired her sense of adventure back up. She didn't think she'd have really wanted to go right back to treasure hunting, but the time off had helped rub off the rough edges in her mind. Like having a gun to her head. Sarah's musings were cut short when they arrived at the Heathrow departures drop off.

The taxi driver helped them unload the bags and Sarah followed Chuck to the check-in counter, dutifully handing over her passport. Chuck was handling that, and she liked to let him. But, something was wrong."Chuck, I think they put us on the wrong flight," she said, perusing her ticket. "This says Nice, France."

"Yeah," Chuck grinned. "Surprise!"

Sarah glared through her eyelashes at him. "It's too much!"

"We'll be back in LA in plenty time for your first day of class."

"Not what I meant," She said. "Chuck, it's too much as a gift."

"Nope, I got a good deal, and flying from London to the south of France round trip is like flying to Vegas from LA. It's almost the same price as a bus or train ticket."

"If you could take a train across the English channel."

"You know they built a tunnel under the thing, right."

"What? When did that happen?"

"Like fifteen years ago. Maybe more. Back in the nineties sometime. Where were you, hiding under a rock?"

"Well, sorta..."

Chuck winced. "Right. Sorry..."

"Don't worry about it," Sarah said. "It's in the past, right?"

"Yeah. Okay. Still, this wasn't supposed to be a whole thing with us. It was supposed to be a grand romantic gesture on my part."

Sarah looked at the ticket. "No, I get that. I guess I kind of overreacted, huh? France kind of always had this mythic quality for me, you know. It's weird thinking of just dropping by the south of France."

"I totally get that. I always wanted to go to Paris, see the Eiffel tower and all that."

"Then why not tickets to Paris?"

"This is your birthday, not mine. South of France has beaches, snorkeling... your kind of stuff."

Sarah frowned. "My kind of stuff doesn't include romantic dinners in Paris? You don't know me as well as you think."

"You want to go to Paris? I can get us tickets to Paris."

Sarah waved it off. "No, Nice sounds, well... nice."

Chuck rolled his eyes, and wrapped her in a hug. "It's pronounced more like neice," Chuck explained into the top of her head.

Sarah grunted and shook her head. "Okay, who made you the French pronunciation police, huh?" She turned to loop an arm around his waist and nudge him toward the security line.

"That would be Madame Grantly at Burbank High School," he said. "Don't you speak French? I thought..."

"English, Spanish, Tagalog, and some Thai," She said. "I took German in high school, but only for a year. I forgot most of it."

"Huh. Only three languages and some change, huh?" Chuck said, shaking his head ruefully. "Some spy you'd make. Isn't seven like the minimum?"

They had to cut the banter short, when they hit the head of the security line. It must have been a low volume day, by chance, since it'd only taken a few minutes to get that far. But, for some reason in spite of that, or perhaps because of it, the screeners gave Chuck and Sarah particular scrutiny. Chuck frowned. One of the screeners looked familiar. Tall and fit, with a bland expressionless face, the man pulled Chuck aside and insisted on searching his bag. Then they did the whole thing with the metal detector wand, before finally letting him go on. The man never spoke, and Sarah was a little worried by the time Chuck made it through to the gate area.

"What was all that about?" Sarah asked. Chuck just shrugged.

"No idea. But I'm glad we got here with plenty of time to spare or we'd have missed our flight."

As they walked to their gate neither noticed the screener who'd paid close attention to Chuck talking on his cell phone.

"I planted the bug, just like you wanted. Now can I please come in from the cold?"

"No," the voice on the other end replied. "You're still on the CIA's shit-list, Daniel. But there may be opportunities in the private sector soon. We'll keep you in mind."

"Thanks, Mr. Colt."

The heavy sigh was audible on the other end. "What did I say about using that name?" the voice said dangerously.

"Sorry sir, won't happen again."

"You bet your ass it won't!"

Sarah put her head on Chuck's shoulder and tried to get some sleep. The flight wasn't going to be more than an hour or so, but sleep wouldn't come. Chuck on the other hand seemed to just conk out with no difficulty whatsoever. After a few minutes into the flight, he started snoring. Actual snoring, like he was sawing logs filled with noise makers. Sarah glared at him and fumed silently for another couple minutes, arms crossed. And now she was too mad to sleep. It wasn't Chuck's fault and she knew it was irrational, but there it was. Sarah scrunched up her nose in annoyance as his continued snoring somehow droned louder than the plane's engines. She half-turned in her window seat and reached across, tucking her arm up under his light jacket into his armpit. Sarah paused then, reconsidering, but decided not to let him get away with it. She began tickling him unmercifully. At first, his slumber held, but after a few seconds, he began to stir. Finally, after a full quarter of a minute, Chuck jolted awake and began trying to worm his way out of his seat belt into the aisle, frantic to escape.

"Help, help, I'm being repressed!" Chuck said, laughing. "Ah, quit it! Stay on your side! Hands to yourself-Agh!"

"Is something the matter?" A stewardess said, appearing seemingly out of nowhere, blonde of hair and speaking in an Aussie accent.

Sarah blushed. "My boyfriend's snoring was keeping me awake."

"So you try to tickle me to death?" Chuck demanded.

"He's overreacting," Sarah said to the stewardess, who grinned and just shook her head.

"Try to keep the noise down to a dull roar, yeah?"

"No, wait, don't go? She's merciless!" Chuck complained. "I don't even snore! It's a conspiracy I tell you."

Sarah clamped a hand over Chuck's mouth and shook her head at him. "Conspiracy is one of those words I don't think you're allowed to say on planes, Chuck." Sarah nodded to the stewardess, who grinned and matched the nod with one of her own. The international conspiracy of blonde women continued unchallenged.

Chuck's eyes widened. He knew it! He glowered at her and crossed his arms huffily but didn't pull her hand away to speak. He arched an eyebrow instead, and opened his mouth to underneath her hand, slobbering on her palm.

Sarah wrinkled her nose and tugged her hand away. "Eugh!" She said, wiping her hand on her airline issued blanket.

Chuck shrugged. "That's what you get, trying to infringe on my right to freedom of speech. Great. Now I'm up, same as you."

Sarah cocked her head to one side. "In that case... mile high club?"

Chuck stared at her. "Um..."

She raised an eyebrow at him and bobbed her head toward the bathroom just behind their first class seats. "Wait a couple minutes, and then knock on the door."

"How will you know it's me?"

"Knock the first couple bars of the Imperial March," Sarah demonstrated on his leg, and then got out of her seat-belt and sidled past him. Chuck barely avoided getting hip-checked in the face. Sarah grinned and headed aft.

Chuck was still in something of a state of shock at this entire development, but he wasn't going to complain about it. He waited, nervous as all get-out, and finally, when he was gathering himself to go join her, a stewardess came over the PA.

"We're going to be encountering some turbulence, so we are turning on the fasten seat belt sign," the horrible voice said. "At this time we'd ask all passengers to return to their seats."

Chuck was halfway between sitting and standing. A stewardess in the jump seat at the front of the first class cabin saw him and pointed him back into his seat. "But, um. I've gotta use the bathroom."

"Is it an emergency?"

"Um. Well, I uh, you know... uhm... not really."

"Then sit."

"Ugh!" Chuck said and sat down huffily.

The plane did indeed hit turbulence a bare thirty seconds later. It only lasted a few minutes, but then the seatbelt light would turn back off and...

"We're going to be starting our descent soon. All seat backs and tray tables need to be returned to their full upright and locked position." Chuck groaned and rolled his eyes.

Sarah came back to her seat and sat with arms crossed, puffed her bangs out of her face grouchily.

"There's always the return trip," Chuck suggested.

"Mmhmm..." Sarah said raising an eyebrow. "You know, if you're willing to throw all this money around, maybe we should just splurge and charter a private flight."

Despite himself, Chuck swallowed nervously. It was the look in her eyes that did it, really.

TO BE CONTINUED...