"Well, I have to say, strip chess is certainly something I've never played
before." Nina led with, as her contribution to the conversation at dinner.
They'd been given a seat in the corner of the restaurant, but despite
their isolation, Nina could see a smirk on the face of a man just over
Jack's shoulder.
"Are you complaining?" There was a soft smile on his face as he buttered his roll.
"No, just....surprised." She added with some thought. Jack finally raised the buttered bread to his mouth and took a large bite, the smile growing larger as he thought back to their escapades last night.
"How many bedroom lights came on suddenly last night?"
She let out a soft snort. "Would you prefer I keep it down next time?"
Jack raised his eyebrows at her, she'd timed her question so that his mouth was full at the time. From his vantage point he could see the waiter making his way over with the dessert they'd ordered to share, both sure that their earlier food had filled their stomachs.
"Or were you criticising? We can find out how many rooms are occupied and I can count next time if you like...." She brought her hands back up to the table, having spent the last ten minutes fiddling with her napkin.
The waiter began to move the flowers and candle from the centre of the table so he could place the dessert between the two of them. They both leaned back, giving the man more than enough room. He gave them both extra napkins and utensils, and then placed a large bowl between them, their elaborately decorated sweet, that Nina had chosen.
"Thanks..." said Jack to the waiter, and then "...what exactly is it that I'm eating?"
Nina collected her fork and spiked directly into the middle of the white mass in front of them. The forkful she collected was multicoloured, a layer of pastry and then something red followed by a layer of white mass. "Well, this is white chocolate mousse..." She held her fork over the plate to avoid dropping it on the table cloth, and gestured to each layer in turn with her free index finger. "...these are raspberries...and this is a layer of puff pastry."
"Does it taste good?" He asked her.
"I don't know yet." She muttered, finishing the demonstration and bringing the mouthful to her lips.
"Hey, hey..." Jack interrupted, snapping a finger. She raised an eyebrow at him, that just got higher as he tugged on her wrist and took the food off the end of her fork.
The comical aspect of the situation was strong enough for her smirk to last until he'd finished the mouthful. "Well, it's better than chocolate pudding..."
Another soft snort, he took the fork from her and dug into the middle of the dish, returning with a forkful much like hers, but a little sloppier. "So we're feeding each other now?" She queried, just as the fork closed the last few inches to her mouth and she began to eat. The comment held hints of sarcasm and ridicule, but both of them thought it was a charming and endearing notion. The taste was incredible.
"Well, if we wanted to quibble, I've given you worse things to put in your mouth...." She had to swallow the mouthful quickly, cutting out on some of the flavour, to avoid laughing and losing the food in a scene.
Jack managed to keep a deadpan face, but the guy behind him chuckled, and whispered Jack's comment to his friend. Because of her laughter, it took her longer to finish her mouthful than expected, and it was too late to comment when she did.
"Mind you, you can consider those times payback for your cooking..."
Nina gave him a big smile, he was one of few men that could make her laugh. That prestigious group included just him, her brother and the 'Umbilical Brothers' an Australian comedy act. "Ignoring the insult to my cooking for a minute, maybe I should cook for you more often."
Jack obviously didn't like the dessert as much as she did, feeding more of it to her than she did to him. She chased the remains of the mousse off the plate whilst Jack ordered their coffees, and then the bill. The waiter took the plate at the same time as he brought the bill, and she had to race him to put her credit card down before him.
"Nina..." he growled as they tossed their cards to the plate at the same time, hers had landed first. She picked his up and held it out to him. Neither of them wanted to make a scene, but they'd been at the restaurant for a while, and the waiter was hovering, so it was inevitable they'd be over heard.
"Jack?" he queried innocently.
"Why should I let you pay?"
"Why should I let _you_ pay?"
"How about the fact that you planned this entire weekend, you've done enough for the weekend..."
"Exactly, I planned it, I'm paying..."
"Just let me pay for dinner, come on, Nina." She'd let him pay for dinner last night, but they could continue the argument forever if she didn't just give in now. At some point in the conversation he'd picked up her credit card and was holding it out to her in the same manner as she held hers to him. She let out a staggered sigh and dropped his card back on his dish, the waiter collected it quickly, and took hers from him, slotting it back into her wallet.
Jack took a sip of his coffee, his middle finger tapping the side of his saucer as the small cup made its way to and from his mouth. There was something he wanted to know. "What?" Nina eventually asked, when the cup had made it's way down and Jack showed no hint of asking his question.
"We did financial disclosure on Monday..."
Nina raised her eyebrows at him, she didn't see where this was leading, so she prompted "You discovered that money I made drug dealing...."
Jack ignored her sarcasm. "You're clean."
"Well, thank you." She said, not at all surprised. Every three months the financial records of each agent working at CTU was vetted by their superior officer, they were checked for any discrepancies, just in case they were taking money from a terrorist organisation. They were many ways to get around vetting, but CTU did it anyway. "What's wrong then?"
"Mason approved all you records up until you started working for me - "
She cut him off this time, sure of what he wanted. "And you wanted to know how I made my money?"
Jack smiled, it was an impertinent question, but he had been wondering. "I had wondered."
"Haven't you read my file?" She asked, resting her cheek on her palm. The coffee was too hot to drink anyway, a conversation with Jack seemed a good enough way to pass the time.
"Yes."
"And you didn't happen to notice those published papers, the years I spent on the lecture circuit?" She asked, amazed how easily he managed to breeze over certain details.
"Yeah - so, you were a lecturer?"
"Whilst I worked on my masters. I toured for a while, lecturing for a few weeks at a time, writing..." She paused a minute. She was sure that Jack had absolutely no idea what her papers were on, and wanted to ask, but felt that he couldn't. "...international politics and security - the theory, you were doing, I wrote."
"You advised the UN too, didn't you?" He wondered, now begining to recall the contents of her dossier.
"Yes, but that certainly didn't pay well. I did the majority of my lecturing then actually - I made more money as a policy advisor outside of the office than inside it. People tended to be impressed when they were lectured by Nina Myers, SSP advisor to the UN."
"It's an impressive title." Jack muttered. He leant forward and replaced his cup and saucer on the table in front of him. He took Nina's hand from around the saucer and interlaced their fingers low on the table, playing with her thumb.
Nina covered her surprise with a sip of coffee and a joke. "And now I'm Nina Myers, office lakey, who writes boring reports and sleeps with her boss."
Jack took her seriously, giving up on her thumb, and squeezing her fingers "Do you regret giving up the title, the money?"
She gave humour a second attempt. "I will do if you start printing business cards out for me that say _that_." She earned a smile, and was relieved. "No, I make much more of an impact doing this than I ever did for the UN. I get more job satisfaction."
Jacks smile got much wider, and she knew he'd slipped into a more diverted mindset. He let go of her hand to edit and sign the bill as their waiter approached, and she took the opportunity to drain the remaining liquid in one quick gulp.
"You ready to go?" He asked her, he glanced at his watch as he tugged his sleeves up a little.
"Yeah, what time is it?" She asked, she'd noticed the surreptitious glance at his watch, and had been worrying about the time herself. She still had plans for them tonight.
"Half eleven." He muttered as she rose from the table and pushed her chair in. He rose too, and guided her out of the restaurant, placing a guiding hand on the small of her back. They made it to the door, said their goodbyes to the wait staff and waited as their car was brought round the corner of the building.
Nina wound an arm behind his and slipped her hand into the waistband of his trousers at the far side of his body. "You still awake?" She asked him, relishing the cold wind on her face.
"Yeah, but I wouldn't mind going to bed anyway." He whispered, offering a quick glance at the end of his sentence, as their rental car appeared in front of him.
"Too bad." Nina muttered to him as she opened the passenger side door and climbed in. Jack watched her for a minute before he rounded the car and sat down next to her, ready to drive off on another one of her little escapades.
-24-
"You okay?" She yelled into Jack's ear, leaning close to be heard over the sound of the music emanating from the dance floor below. After dinner they'd returned to the hotel to give her a chance to change and Jack a chance to get out of the evenings plans, to sleep, but now they were back out again.
"Yeah, I'm just a little..." Surprised? "...Yeah." He answered her, relishing in the chance to pull her body to his just to answer a simple question.
They were in Mambo no. 6, a nightclub, named as a play on the song by a similar name. They were standing on the ledge that ran around the room, overlooking the dance floor below, or at least it would have done if there wasn't a crowd of people blocking the dance floor. The upper ledge was decorated with surfing and tropical memorabilia. Surf boards adorned the walls, whilst the bar was made of thick wood, slapped disorderedly into place. The bar offered cocktails along a tropical theme, whilst the waiters handed out colourful plastic lei to all their customers. The bartender had taken a shine to Nina, and leant over the barrier when she ordered her shot, dropping the plastic necklace on her naked shoulders and whispering to her "You got lei-d."
The dancefloor below was a different theme altogether, hardcore dancing, the walls of, what could only be described as the pit, were painted black, and at the far end sat a dj in her box, blonde braids tied up behind a wide alice band, pink sunglasses rooted in front of her eyes as she mixed on four decks of music. There were four podiums, each at different corners of the pit, evacuated of extrovert dancers at regular intervals to provide space for the scantily clad gogo girls, who danced the same dance at different speeds. A line of green lasers was shone across the room at floor height, so that you walked through the rotating lights as you ventured to the dance floor. Strobe lasers flashed, slowing down the movements of the dancers to a few feet movements and waving of their hands every second, the strobe making them appear so active.
Nina's hand gripped Jack's where it hung, waist height as he nodded in time with the music and glanced around the room. He took in the room as he looked at his date, his eyes resting on Nina as she turned away from him, watching the DJ box on the floor across the room. Her second hand touched her shot on the sticky bar, claiming the drink as hers, a thick layer of caramel coloured liquid topped with a layer of whipped cream. His black shirt and trousers matched the dress code of the bar, however he was positive they'd be coated in sweat when he started dancing.
Nina, however, would probably be much more comfortable. Her black vest was backless, supported by five, he'd counted, thin straps, adorned with beads, that hung loose against her skin, illustrating her thin figure. The only place they were tight was around her chest, where her small breasts managed to fill out the flimsy piece of material. She wore a pair of tight black trousers, that hung low on her waist, leaving the sides of her thong poking out of the top.
He was still memerised by the lighter skin at the top of her trousers when her hand tightened around his and she began moving in time to the beat. She gripped her second hand around his and leant forward, collecting the shot glass with her mouth and swallowing the shot, slowly letting the piece of glass out from her top lip, when she looked as though she was about to drop it, Jack reached out and took the glass from her. He put it down on the counter as she wiped her mouth of the last dregs of drink. She smiled at him. "I want to dance." She told him.
Jack didn't hear the words, but he saw her lips move and was then tugged to the dance floor. Down the steps of the dancefloor, clutching his beer bottle in one hand and weaving between people, gripping Nina with the other. She pulled him into a narrow gap in the middle, and started dancing, moving her hips and arms in time with the music.
"Hey boy! Hey girl!" She yelled, in time with several hundred other clubbers and the record. "Superstar DJ, here we go." The dance music became more thrashing, and she danced away like mad, shaking her body with the lively music. It wasn't long before the crowds of men they were dancing near began to turn and dance around her, reaching out hands occasionally to try and pull her hips to theirs. More often than not Nina didn't notice them, so they got deflected and ignored. When she noticed them, they pulled her to them, and she'd dance with them for a little while, grinding her hips against theirs until they got bored of dancing with her back and left. Jack wasn't as active at dancing as any of these men, and finished off his beer as Nina finished dancing with one of them, dropping the green glass on the floor and gripping her wrist.
He wrenched her out of the next man's clutches and pulled her into him. She was quite happy to dance with him, she slid over his leg, dancing against his thighs and wrapping an arm around his waist. Jack slipped an arm around her waist in turn, resting his palm on her buttock. This was a fast tune, but they could get away with dancing at this, much slower pace.
Nina leant in and rested her forehead against his shoulder. Jack cupped her chin, raising it for a quick, church kiss, before letting her lean against his bicep, and dance the rest of the night there.
-24-
"Are you complaining?" There was a soft smile on his face as he buttered his roll.
"No, just....surprised." She added with some thought. Jack finally raised the buttered bread to his mouth and took a large bite, the smile growing larger as he thought back to their escapades last night.
"How many bedroom lights came on suddenly last night?"
She let out a soft snort. "Would you prefer I keep it down next time?"
Jack raised his eyebrows at her, she'd timed her question so that his mouth was full at the time. From his vantage point he could see the waiter making his way over with the dessert they'd ordered to share, both sure that their earlier food had filled their stomachs.
"Or were you criticising? We can find out how many rooms are occupied and I can count next time if you like...." She brought her hands back up to the table, having spent the last ten minutes fiddling with her napkin.
The waiter began to move the flowers and candle from the centre of the table so he could place the dessert between the two of them. They both leaned back, giving the man more than enough room. He gave them both extra napkins and utensils, and then placed a large bowl between them, their elaborately decorated sweet, that Nina had chosen.
"Thanks..." said Jack to the waiter, and then "...what exactly is it that I'm eating?"
Nina collected her fork and spiked directly into the middle of the white mass in front of them. The forkful she collected was multicoloured, a layer of pastry and then something red followed by a layer of white mass. "Well, this is white chocolate mousse..." She held her fork over the plate to avoid dropping it on the table cloth, and gestured to each layer in turn with her free index finger. "...these are raspberries...and this is a layer of puff pastry."
"Does it taste good?" He asked her.
"I don't know yet." She muttered, finishing the demonstration and bringing the mouthful to her lips.
"Hey, hey..." Jack interrupted, snapping a finger. She raised an eyebrow at him, that just got higher as he tugged on her wrist and took the food off the end of her fork.
The comical aspect of the situation was strong enough for her smirk to last until he'd finished the mouthful. "Well, it's better than chocolate pudding..."
Another soft snort, he took the fork from her and dug into the middle of the dish, returning with a forkful much like hers, but a little sloppier. "So we're feeding each other now?" She queried, just as the fork closed the last few inches to her mouth and she began to eat. The comment held hints of sarcasm and ridicule, but both of them thought it was a charming and endearing notion. The taste was incredible.
"Well, if we wanted to quibble, I've given you worse things to put in your mouth...." She had to swallow the mouthful quickly, cutting out on some of the flavour, to avoid laughing and losing the food in a scene.
Jack managed to keep a deadpan face, but the guy behind him chuckled, and whispered Jack's comment to his friend. Because of her laughter, it took her longer to finish her mouthful than expected, and it was too late to comment when she did.
"Mind you, you can consider those times payback for your cooking..."
Nina gave him a big smile, he was one of few men that could make her laugh. That prestigious group included just him, her brother and the 'Umbilical Brothers' an Australian comedy act. "Ignoring the insult to my cooking for a minute, maybe I should cook for you more often."
Jack obviously didn't like the dessert as much as she did, feeding more of it to her than she did to him. She chased the remains of the mousse off the plate whilst Jack ordered their coffees, and then the bill. The waiter took the plate at the same time as he brought the bill, and she had to race him to put her credit card down before him.
"Nina..." he growled as they tossed their cards to the plate at the same time, hers had landed first. She picked his up and held it out to him. Neither of them wanted to make a scene, but they'd been at the restaurant for a while, and the waiter was hovering, so it was inevitable they'd be over heard.
"Jack?" he queried innocently.
"Why should I let you pay?"
"Why should I let _you_ pay?"
"How about the fact that you planned this entire weekend, you've done enough for the weekend..."
"Exactly, I planned it, I'm paying..."
"Just let me pay for dinner, come on, Nina." She'd let him pay for dinner last night, but they could continue the argument forever if she didn't just give in now. At some point in the conversation he'd picked up her credit card and was holding it out to her in the same manner as she held hers to him. She let out a staggered sigh and dropped his card back on his dish, the waiter collected it quickly, and took hers from him, slotting it back into her wallet.
Jack took a sip of his coffee, his middle finger tapping the side of his saucer as the small cup made its way to and from his mouth. There was something he wanted to know. "What?" Nina eventually asked, when the cup had made it's way down and Jack showed no hint of asking his question.
"We did financial disclosure on Monday..."
Nina raised her eyebrows at him, she didn't see where this was leading, so she prompted "You discovered that money I made drug dealing...."
Jack ignored her sarcasm. "You're clean."
"Well, thank you." She said, not at all surprised. Every three months the financial records of each agent working at CTU was vetted by their superior officer, they were checked for any discrepancies, just in case they were taking money from a terrorist organisation. They were many ways to get around vetting, but CTU did it anyway. "What's wrong then?"
"Mason approved all you records up until you started working for me - "
She cut him off this time, sure of what he wanted. "And you wanted to know how I made my money?"
Jack smiled, it was an impertinent question, but he had been wondering. "I had wondered."
"Haven't you read my file?" She asked, resting her cheek on her palm. The coffee was too hot to drink anyway, a conversation with Jack seemed a good enough way to pass the time.
"Yes."
"And you didn't happen to notice those published papers, the years I spent on the lecture circuit?" She asked, amazed how easily he managed to breeze over certain details.
"Yeah - so, you were a lecturer?"
"Whilst I worked on my masters. I toured for a while, lecturing for a few weeks at a time, writing..." She paused a minute. She was sure that Jack had absolutely no idea what her papers were on, and wanted to ask, but felt that he couldn't. "...international politics and security - the theory, you were doing, I wrote."
"You advised the UN too, didn't you?" He wondered, now begining to recall the contents of her dossier.
"Yes, but that certainly didn't pay well. I did the majority of my lecturing then actually - I made more money as a policy advisor outside of the office than inside it. People tended to be impressed when they were lectured by Nina Myers, SSP advisor to the UN."
"It's an impressive title." Jack muttered. He leant forward and replaced his cup and saucer on the table in front of him. He took Nina's hand from around the saucer and interlaced their fingers low on the table, playing with her thumb.
Nina covered her surprise with a sip of coffee and a joke. "And now I'm Nina Myers, office lakey, who writes boring reports and sleeps with her boss."
Jack took her seriously, giving up on her thumb, and squeezing her fingers "Do you regret giving up the title, the money?"
She gave humour a second attempt. "I will do if you start printing business cards out for me that say _that_." She earned a smile, and was relieved. "No, I make much more of an impact doing this than I ever did for the UN. I get more job satisfaction."
Jacks smile got much wider, and she knew he'd slipped into a more diverted mindset. He let go of her hand to edit and sign the bill as their waiter approached, and she took the opportunity to drain the remaining liquid in one quick gulp.
"You ready to go?" He asked her, he glanced at his watch as he tugged his sleeves up a little.
"Yeah, what time is it?" She asked, she'd noticed the surreptitious glance at his watch, and had been worrying about the time herself. She still had plans for them tonight.
"Half eleven." He muttered as she rose from the table and pushed her chair in. He rose too, and guided her out of the restaurant, placing a guiding hand on the small of her back. They made it to the door, said their goodbyes to the wait staff and waited as their car was brought round the corner of the building.
Nina wound an arm behind his and slipped her hand into the waistband of his trousers at the far side of his body. "You still awake?" She asked him, relishing the cold wind on her face.
"Yeah, but I wouldn't mind going to bed anyway." He whispered, offering a quick glance at the end of his sentence, as their rental car appeared in front of him.
"Too bad." Nina muttered to him as she opened the passenger side door and climbed in. Jack watched her for a minute before he rounded the car and sat down next to her, ready to drive off on another one of her little escapades.
-24-
"You okay?" She yelled into Jack's ear, leaning close to be heard over the sound of the music emanating from the dance floor below. After dinner they'd returned to the hotel to give her a chance to change and Jack a chance to get out of the evenings plans, to sleep, but now they were back out again.
"Yeah, I'm just a little..." Surprised? "...Yeah." He answered her, relishing in the chance to pull her body to his just to answer a simple question.
They were in Mambo no. 6, a nightclub, named as a play on the song by a similar name. They were standing on the ledge that ran around the room, overlooking the dance floor below, or at least it would have done if there wasn't a crowd of people blocking the dance floor. The upper ledge was decorated with surfing and tropical memorabilia. Surf boards adorned the walls, whilst the bar was made of thick wood, slapped disorderedly into place. The bar offered cocktails along a tropical theme, whilst the waiters handed out colourful plastic lei to all their customers. The bartender had taken a shine to Nina, and leant over the barrier when she ordered her shot, dropping the plastic necklace on her naked shoulders and whispering to her "You got lei-d."
The dancefloor below was a different theme altogether, hardcore dancing, the walls of, what could only be described as the pit, were painted black, and at the far end sat a dj in her box, blonde braids tied up behind a wide alice band, pink sunglasses rooted in front of her eyes as she mixed on four decks of music. There were four podiums, each at different corners of the pit, evacuated of extrovert dancers at regular intervals to provide space for the scantily clad gogo girls, who danced the same dance at different speeds. A line of green lasers was shone across the room at floor height, so that you walked through the rotating lights as you ventured to the dance floor. Strobe lasers flashed, slowing down the movements of the dancers to a few feet movements and waving of their hands every second, the strobe making them appear so active.
Nina's hand gripped Jack's where it hung, waist height as he nodded in time with the music and glanced around the room. He took in the room as he looked at his date, his eyes resting on Nina as she turned away from him, watching the DJ box on the floor across the room. Her second hand touched her shot on the sticky bar, claiming the drink as hers, a thick layer of caramel coloured liquid topped with a layer of whipped cream. His black shirt and trousers matched the dress code of the bar, however he was positive they'd be coated in sweat when he started dancing.
Nina, however, would probably be much more comfortable. Her black vest was backless, supported by five, he'd counted, thin straps, adorned with beads, that hung loose against her skin, illustrating her thin figure. The only place they were tight was around her chest, where her small breasts managed to fill out the flimsy piece of material. She wore a pair of tight black trousers, that hung low on her waist, leaving the sides of her thong poking out of the top.
He was still memerised by the lighter skin at the top of her trousers when her hand tightened around his and she began moving in time to the beat. She gripped her second hand around his and leant forward, collecting the shot glass with her mouth and swallowing the shot, slowly letting the piece of glass out from her top lip, when she looked as though she was about to drop it, Jack reached out and took the glass from her. He put it down on the counter as she wiped her mouth of the last dregs of drink. She smiled at him. "I want to dance." She told him.
Jack didn't hear the words, but he saw her lips move and was then tugged to the dance floor. Down the steps of the dancefloor, clutching his beer bottle in one hand and weaving between people, gripping Nina with the other. She pulled him into a narrow gap in the middle, and started dancing, moving her hips and arms in time with the music.
"Hey boy! Hey girl!" She yelled, in time with several hundred other clubbers and the record. "Superstar DJ, here we go." The dance music became more thrashing, and she danced away like mad, shaking her body with the lively music. It wasn't long before the crowds of men they were dancing near began to turn and dance around her, reaching out hands occasionally to try and pull her hips to theirs. More often than not Nina didn't notice them, so they got deflected and ignored. When she noticed them, they pulled her to them, and she'd dance with them for a little while, grinding her hips against theirs until they got bored of dancing with her back and left. Jack wasn't as active at dancing as any of these men, and finished off his beer as Nina finished dancing with one of them, dropping the green glass on the floor and gripping her wrist.
He wrenched her out of the next man's clutches and pulled her into him. She was quite happy to dance with him, she slid over his leg, dancing against his thighs and wrapping an arm around his waist. Jack slipped an arm around her waist in turn, resting his palm on her buttock. This was a fast tune, but they could get away with dancing at this, much slower pace.
Nina leant in and rested her forehead against his shoulder. Jack cupped her chin, raising it for a quick, church kiss, before letting her lean against his bicep, and dance the rest of the night there.
-24-