Title: There Is No Mathematics To Love And Loss
Author: Nat
Summary: She felt his strength behind her, and it made her stand taller
Fandom: 24
Pairing: Jack/Chloe Friendship.
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: sorry don't own 'em
A/N: This was for the Chlack Song Fic Challenge, for Niwalker. Her songs I had to use where;
1. Collide by Howie Day
2. I Want to Come Over-Melissa Ethridge
3. Flying High- Jem
4. Don't Cry- Guns 'n' Roses
5. November Rain- Guns 'n' Roses
6. Stellar- Incubus
I was the over-achiever and used all of them.
---
I. I'm quiet you know. You make a first impression
They were sitting in a bar together, because she refused to let him sit at home and be miserable anymore, and it was probably good for him to at least leave his apartment. But he was still playing the brooding hero.
So to get him out of his slump, she started to check out chicks with him (well hopefully with him) because it was about time he got over Audrey.
Taking a swig of her beer, she looked across the bar and nodded to a leggy blonde, and said "Why don't you go talk to that blonde? She's hot."
Jack coughed, and maybe blushed, she wasn't sure; the lighting in the bar wasn't good enough to tell. But he looked embarrassed, maybe even shy.
"Ok, so the blonde isn't your type." She looked around, "Oh, how about the brunette by the pool tables? Definitely hot, I'd do her."
Jack rubbed a hand over his forehead and didn't even look in the brunette's direction; instead he was looking at her, "Chloe what's going on?"
She rolled her eyes, and hissed at him "You're what's wrong Jack, Audrey dumped you. I get that, I really do, but all you've done is sulked in your apartment for weeks. You have to get over it, buck up and move on."
Jack's eyebrows shot up and she felt kinda bad for having to lay it out there like that for him, but it was the truth and he wasn't friends with her if he wanted everything sugar coated.
"I know," he sighed, "I'm sorry."
She nodded at the bartender for two more beers, and when they were place in front of them, she nudged Jack gently. "It's ok."
Then she swivelled on her bar stool and looked around the crowded bar.
"So how about that brunette at the pool table?"
He smiled at her, the first real smile in weeks, "I was thinking more along the lines of the redhead at the other end of the bar."
And she smiled back, knowing he was going to be ok.
II. Hmmm, so close to giving in
She almost takes Morris back for a third time.
Yes she knows she's incredibly stupid for even considering it, especially the way it ended the last time, but every now and then, she has this… feeling. Like she wants more with her life, and maybe yeah, she wants kids and a husband and the whole white picket fence thing.
Usually she can wait a few days, maybe go on a few horrible dates, eat a tonne of ice cream and then realise why she likes being on her own and remember that kids irritate her. Except the timing is all horrible this time around (which is practically her life story) when Morris starts calling again, begging for forgiveness, apparently over his fling with some big breasted bimbo. She manages to tell him to get lost for the first few days, until this… feeling kicks in and she can hear her resolve start to crumble.
It just happens though, the day she's about to let him walk back in her door, Jack turns up on her doorstep, interrupting them and she doesn't know how he knew what was going on with her, or if he knew what she was about to do or maybe it was this completely random thing.
But just like with everything else Jack does, he takes the situation in stride and assesses what's going on and then acts. Maybe he could see the inner turmoil that she was going through or maybe saw some sort of desperation in her eyes, but he saw something and saved her from another disastrous relationship.
He moved to her side smoothly, his hand moving to rest on the small of her back and he looked between Morris and herself, his eyes lingering on her, "Everything ok Chloe."
And she felt herself harden, like a second skin was stretching over her bones and toughing her up. She felt his strength behind her, and it made her stand taller. Her eyes narrowed and she felt all the softness melt away.
Scowl back firmly in place.
"Everything's good Jack. Morris was just leaving."
III. I know your friend. You told her about me
"Why do women feel threatened by you?" Jack asks her one night while they're in the middle of a Halo 3 marathon.
She glances at him quickly, her eyes darting from the screen to him, then back to the screen, her fingers flying over the buttons of her hand controller and she blows one of the ghosts out of the sky.
"By women, do you mean your girlfriends?" She interprets.
"Yeah." Jack replies as he pushes a few buttons making Masterchief steal a banshee, and knock the covenant guy off it.
She sighs, "Because we do this."
"What? Play Halo?"
"Not because we play Halo, but because we hang out so much. They think I'm going to steal you."
Jack hits the pause button then, and turns his head to look at her from his position on the floor.
"Really?"
"Really." She repeats, and it's kinda really pathetic she thinks and she doesn't know what that says about the women Jack keeps dating, but she doesn't say that too him.
"But we're friends." he says it like it's the most obvious thing in the world. Which it is. But it doesn't stop people from thinking more.
She motions for him to un-pause the game, not really wanting to have this discussion and have explain to him why all his girlfriends think they're secretly in love or something equally as sappy and cliché.
Jack doesn't move, just continues staring at her, waiting for her to explain it to him anyway.
Huffing, she drops her hand controller, "I know that, but everyone else seems to find our friendship interesting and wants to put there nose into our business because it's easy for us. We hang out; we have fun, no complications. Its like, you're a man; I'm a woman; so instantly we should be having sex."
Jack looks kind of shocked by her blunt assessment, she doesn't really care because he should be used to it by now. But he's looking at her intently now, like he's working something out in his head, and then he grins at her like a man having an epiphany and turns back to the screen before she can say anything and un-pauses the game.
She scowls at him while scrambling for her hand controller and mutters, "A little notice would be nice."
IV. But lovers always come and lovers always go
Audrey breaks up with him a couple of weeks after he gets back from China, giving Jack some excuse about her not being able to help him, and not knowing how to act around him anymore and not to mention the crap about her trying to pin it back on him, saying he won't let her in to help.
Chloe snorts her disgust when Jack finally tells her. Not that she couldn't see this coming a mile off. Audrey was always high maintenance, and could never deal with what Jack was capable of and what he did.
She's not exactly sure what the rules of engagement state with men and break ups. The only experience she has with guys and break ups is with Chase, but as usually Chase was the one doing the breaking up, not on the receiving end of it.
So she takes him to the movies to see the most action-y, blowing-things-up movie she can find and when they arrive too early (because she thought it was going to take her a lot longer to drag him out of the house then it actually did) they wander into the games place next door and she pulls some coins from her pocket so they can play animal hunting or extreme hunting or whatever.
The plastic shotgun still feels too big and heavy and awkward in hands, but Jacks laughing at her technique and looking better than he has in weeks so she tries not to scowl so much.
"You're not suppose to shoot the little ones Chloe, its illegal." Jack states while pumping two shots into one of the larger bears.
She glares at him when the stage is over, "Well I wouldn't if they'd just stop running out in front of me! They're asking to be shot!"
The next time she has a bad date, Jack takes her to the movies and they play Animal hunting or Animal hunter or Extreme Hunting or whatever it's called.
V. But you'll be alright now sugar
When he shows up on her door step at 3 am one morning after he went MIA six weeks ago she's pretty sure she should have something to say to him, like something that has a lot of yelling involved. Stuff like, 'Where the hell have you been?' and 'What the hell are you doing here?' or 'You could have told me where you were going!'
But she doesn't.
She turns away from him, leaving the door wide open, and goes back to bed. Jack can do what he likes at this point she has decided, because she doesn't have it in her at the moment to care where he's been or what he's been doing. She just needs to go back to her dark bedroom and sleep and hide away from the world again.
When she hears him in her bedroom kicking off his shoes, and then feels him crawling into bed with her, spooning up behind her his hand resting on her hip, she should yell and kick him out and tell him not to come back here. But she doesn't because his hand moves to rest over her flat stomach like he knows her secrets.
Like he knows she had a miscarriage weeks ago and that her ex-husband (husband?) left her for the second time, and that she hasn't left her apartment since.
Like he knows that she needed him but she would never admit it.
She bites her lip trying not to cry.
"I'm sorry." Jack whispers into her shoulder and she feels it more than hears it.
VI. I need you to see this place.
Jack sends her a cryptic text message containing only numbers. Of course she deciphers it in less than 10 minutes and works out that its latitude and longitude, and a time. A meeting place she concludes, but has no idea why the cloak and dagger routine.
It's a park, with lots of children running around and playing (and screaming), a soccer field on the other side with a game already being played, and a jogging track all along the outer side.
The amount of people and screaming kids is already starting to irritate her.
She finds Jack sitting on a picnic table and he smiles softly at her when she sits next to him, a coffee cup in his hand and another one next to him on the table and he nods to her that it's hers.
"Thanks." she murmurs, and takes along sip, while she steals glances at him trying to work out what this is and then she frowns slightly, "Please tell me you haven't been here all morning Jack, because this whole sitting and staring thing makes you look kinda creepy and perverted."
Jack only laughs at her, even though she's a little bit serious.
"I like this place." Jack finally says, and she fights the urge to roll her eyes.
"Right." She says, dragging the words out slowly.
He looks around, then looks at her, "You see the joggers, the girl with the ponytail and guy with the red shorts?" She looks around, and spotting them she nods to him, "This is their six lap around, the girl is fit, most likely could do a few more laps, then guy is struggling, the only thing keeping him going is the fact he doesn't want to be outdone by girl."
She watches them for a few yards and notices the guys form is sluggish and he is struggling, but Jack's attention is elsewhere now.
"The soccer game over there, number 7 for the black team has scored two goals, but the score could be more if she passed it off to her team mates. She's not much of a team player. The boy over on the play equipment, on the monkey bars? Blue shirt and brown pants; this is the third time he's tried to swing across them. He's fallen twice and just picked himself up and tried again."
And she forgot about this, his intense eye for detail. Like in any normal day situation he wouldn't use it, like it was a super power he turned on and off whether he was out in the field or not. But she ignores it and says "So you are doing the creepy staring thing."
Jack just shakes his head and ignores her.
"It's about the normal things in life Chloe. Watching the everyday things we take for granted. I've been taking too many things for granted. Starting with life. I was so wrapped up in dying, that I never saw that I was still living."
"What?" She just looks at him like he's crazy, her face scrunched up and she has no idea where this is all coming from and it's confusing her because she doesn't understand.
"I just..." Jack starts, but then stops, looking slightly frustrated that he can't make her understand, "I just like this place, and I wanted you to see it."
There are so many things she could say to that, and even though she doesn't comprehend what Jack's trying to say to her, she does get that it means a lot to him. She doesn't say anything to him, just smiles and she gets down off the table and tugs on his hand so he'll follow her and this time Jack frowns at her.
Chloe smirks a little, "I think you've had enough life for today."
fin