Title: For Now

Author: Jeanine (jeanine@iol.ie)

Rating: PG

Pairing: Tony/Kim

Spoilers: For season one; set between seasons one and two.

Feedback: Makes my day

Disclaimer: If it was in the show, it's not mine.

Archive: At my site The Band Gazebo (helsinkibaby.ahkay.net) Anywhere else please ask first.

Summary: There are plenty of reasons why they shouldn't be doing this.

Author's Note: shakes head I have no idea where this came from - uncon pairings are my thing, but every so often I outdo myself; this is just such a time.

***

He sits on his couch in the wee small hours of the morning, unable to sleep, lost in thought. The room is mostly in darkness, a little light coming in from the hall, still more from a single lamp in the corner of the room. The fire is turned down low, the blue based flames dancing merrily, but offering precious little in the way of either light or heat. There's just enough light in the room that he can make out jolly Santas and innocent angels mocking him from the mantelpiece, a reminder that there are people out there who are celebrating the holiday season, that unlike him, not everyone has been possessed by the spirit of Ebenezer Scrooge.

He's not alone, though it seems like it. Sometimes, he thinks it would be better if he were. He doesn't tell her that though, the woman asleep in his bed down the hall. He doesn't want to disturb her with his sleepless thoughts; she's had troubles enough, so he comes here and thinks.

He thinks of all the reasons why they shouldn't be doing this, why they shouldn't be here like they are, runs through them one by one.

He starts off with his track record with women; with one woman in particular. After all, his last serious relationship - and he was serious with Nina; he did love her - was with a woman who faked her entire life history, a woman who was only sleeping with him so that he would be her willing dupe. A woman who was responsible for more deaths in a single day than he can stand to think about.

An encounter like that would shake anyone's faith in the opposite sex he thinks.

Then there's the fact that she's had to go through a lot too. In the last year, she's had to deal with her parents' separation and subsequent reconciliation, and he knew from the scuttlebutt that went around CTU that she wasn't reacting well to either development. Then, in one day, she gets kidnapped, sees her best friend die, forms an attachment to one of her captors, escapes, gets arrested, kidnapped again, escapes from the Drazens on the sheer strength of her will, and then, just when she thinks that everything is going to be all right, she finds out that her mother has been killed. Killed, he never lets himself forget, by the woman he called his lover.

Between the two of them, they've got enough emotional baggage to keep Oprah in episodes for a month. At least.

He knows he's got no business starting anything with anyone, especially not her. There's no way it can end good, no way to avoid either one of them getting hurt.

Even if there were, there'd still be the age difference to contend with. It doesn't matter how old, how jaded, her eyes are, doesn't matter how old she looked the night that all this started, the night that he saw her arguing with a bouncer at a night club, trying to convince him that she was older than twenty one. None of that matters, because he knows that she's still a kid. He's twenty years older than her, and despite what she saw on Super Tuesday, he's got a lifetime of experiences on her, has seen things that she can't even imagine. She's below the age of consent; no matter how much they both want to, they know that they're breaking the law doing what they're doing, and neither of them seem to care, or to be able to stop themselves. Still though, no matter how hard he tries to forget it, to deny it, to convince himself that it doesn't really matter, the fact remains that he's literally old enough to be her father.

He's not though. Strained as their relationship is, she has a father, a father who loves her, who would kill to protect her, and has. There's certainly no doubt in his mind that if Jack Bauer knew that his little girl was asleep just down the hall that he'd be furious, that he'd kill him where he stood. Maybe he'd be right to.

It wouldn't be like Jack had any deep-seated loyalty to him; they've never got along. He was one of the people who most distrusted Jack at the start of Super Tuesday, and it was only partially to do with the fact that Jack and Nina had once been an item. Jack was erratic, evasive; he didn't think that he could be trusted. Oh, he'd been proven wrong, and when Chapelle had questioned him, he'd backed Jack up wholeheartedly. By the end of the day, his respect for Jack Bauer was immense, and he got the feeling that Jack trusted him more too.

That trust would be ripped to shreds were Jack to ever find out about this.

He's thought about this so many times, not just tonight. So many times he's come to the conclusion that they can't be together, that he's got to be the adult, the grown-up, and tell her so. He's tried to do it, really he has. But then he sees her, touches her, and all his good reasons fall to dust around him.

"Tony? What are you doing?"

Her voice interrupts his thoughts, and he turns his head to look over at her, standing in the doorway. She's backlit by the light from the hall, and just like always, his heart skips a beat when he sees her there, does it again when she takes a couple of steps towards him and he's able to see her face. She's all tousled hair and come to bed eyes, wearing his shirt and damn all else, her whole demeanour more than a little curious.

"Just thinking," he replies, hand rubbing his chin, gaze returning to the flames. He hears her padding across the soft carpet towards him, but he doesn't look up, not until she's standing between him and the fire, and he can no more stop himself looking up at her than he can stop the sun from shining.

"Don't do that," she commands, her voice low and teasing, her hands settling on his shoulders, gentle as a feather, the touch innocent and chaste. But there's nothing chaste in the way that she lowers herself down onto him, straddling his lap, eyes gleaming in the dim light.

"No?" he asks, a genuine question, his hands going of their own accord to her thighs, sliding up until they rest on her hips.

"No," she confirms, shaking her head. "That's not what we're about."

He wants to ask her what they are about, but in the second before her lips meet his, before his hands slip further up under the shirt, the answer comes to him.

They're not about thinking, about analysing. In the weeks and months after Super Tuesday, that's all he did; that's all she did too, and in the end, what good did it do them? All it left them was numb, unable to feel.

Then he was walking home one night, after some friends of his had forcibly dragged him out, telling him it would do him good. He hadn't enjoyed himself, had bailed as soon as he could, and he'd been walking past another night-spot when he saw her there. She was on her own, arguing with the bouncer, trying to convince him to let her in, but there was nothing doing. She'd walked away in disgust, all pursed lips and attitude, and he'd walked faster, catching up with her, asking what she was doing, why she was out there at that hour of the night, dressed like that, backless top, short skirt, high heels. "What do you think?" she'd asked him, taunting him, and he hadn't touched that one. Instead, he'd taken her by the arm, meeting no resistance, and he'd brought her to an all night coffee shop down the block. They'd talked, caught up with one another, but the subject of Super Tuesday hadn't come up once, and he was hardly able to reconcile the painted up, powdered up woman before him as the pale girl all dressed in black that he'd seen at her mother's funeral.

Ignoring her objections, he'd put her in a cab, given the driver far more than he'd need to bring her safely home, and into her hand he'd pressed a napkin from the coffee shop, his phone number written on it. "In case you need to talk," he'd told her.

He didn't know why he'd done that, hadn't expected her to call, but she had, a few days later. They'd met in the same coffee shop, in daylight this time, and she'd been far more conservatively attired, white T-shirt and blue jeans.

That was the first time, but not the last.

What they found to talk about, he couldn't say, but it fell into something easy, comfortable for both of them. It took about a month for the topic of Super Tuesday to come up, and when it did, it happened when they were at his apartment one evening. She'd ended up crying in his arms, sobbing for her mother, and he'd held her, whispering soothing words, wishing he could do more for her.

Maybe it was then things began to change between them, or maybe it was the week after that, when, to thank him for being so nice to her, she decided that she'd cook him dinner at his place. She did everything right, brought over all the ingredients, but where she made her mistake was letting him help her out. They were talking, laughing like they always did, and they lost track of time, lost track of what was supposed to be done and when, and they only came to themselves when the unmistakable smell of burning meat flooded the kitchen. Of course, the fact that they'd had a food fight in the middle of it, ended up picking vegetables out of their hair, their clothes, various places in the kitchen didn't help either, and they ended up sending out for pizza instead.

That day was the first time since Super Tuesday that he remembered laughing, really laughing, not the polite laugh that made everyone else believe that he was doing better than he was.

That night was the first time that he kissed her, standing in the front hall of his house, waiting to see the lights of her taxi through the translucent glass. They were standing close to one another, and she'd smiled up at him, once more thanking him for everything, blushing when he teased her about the food, telling her that she'd have to cook for him again sometime. She told him that she'd love to, and it had been them that they'd seen headlights pulling into the drive. She'd hugged him and he'd pressed his lips to her cheek, holding her tightly. When they'd moved back slightly, they'd ended up staring into one another's eyes, and the next thing he knew, his lips were on hers. He'd thought that she'd be appalled, that she'd push him away, ask him what the hell he was doing, but she didn't. Instead, she kissed him back.

He called her cell the next day, arranged to meet her. He'd spent the whole night thinking, knew just what he was going to tell her. That it had been a one-off thing, that they couldn't do this, that it was impossible. He'd thought she'd be upset, that she'd fight him on it, but she agreed with him, acted very grown up about the whole thing, and they even sealed the agreement with a hug.

Which turned into a kiss.

Which turned into so much more than that.

That's what led them here.

He's not stupid; neither is she. They mightn't have talked about it since that first night, but there's no future in what they're doing. They both know that, both know that it can't lead anywhere.

But for now, it makes them feel alive, makes them feel, full stop.

For now, it's all they have.

For now, it's enough.