-24-
"Well I definitely need a shower." Nina confided, stepping into the elevator, attached to the side of Jack's hip. She reached out and pressed the button for floor one, just above them, and waited for the door to close and Jack to talk.
"Why?" He asked, as though there could be some new reason to take a shower that he didn't know of.
"Champagne..." She prompted.
"I thought I got all of that?" Jack asked. He referred, of course, to the time he'd spent chasing the drops of champagne with his tongue after their al-fresco session on the grass. Something they were beginning to get used to.
Nina shook her head and held a strand of matted hair out in front of her face. They smiled and shared a kiss before the door opened on their floor. Jack reached into his pocket and pulled out their key card, passing it to Nina to open the door with, they walked down the corridor, stopping outside their room for Nina to let them in. "What do you want to do tonight?" He asked her, pushing open the door when he heard the door click.
"I didn't make any plans - I didn't know if you wanted to get some rest, or get some dinner." Nina followed him into the hotel, gladly agreeing to be lifted and kissed as the door clicked shut. "Or just stay in?" She suggested. This was their last night here, they were driving back tomorrow afternoon, Monday, January 15th, Martin Luther King day. It was probably the last time they'd share a bed for the entire night.
"Or see a movie?" Jack suggested, depositing her on the floor again, he wandered over to his night bag and rummaged through it, collecting his bathing pack.
"Is there one you particularly want to see?" Nina asked, folding her arms across her chest as she watched him from the vantage point in the centre of the room.
"No," Jack headed towards the bathroom, "I just want to see a movie with you."
Distracted, Nina smiled to herself for a minute, not noticing Jack was planning on taking a bath until the lights and taps went on in the bathroom. "Hey!" She yelled at him, plodding towards the bathroom. She put her arms around the doorframe and watched as he undid his belt, again.
"What?" Jack asked, tugging his shirt out of his trousers and pushing it off his shoulders.
"I said I was going to have a shower." She complained.
"I'm not stopping you." He muttered, not realising that the bath couldn't run at the same time as the shower, nor could their feet occupy the same space, he just wanted to be naked and wet, clean wouldn't have hurt either.
He dropped his trousers and boxers to the floor, having kicked off his shoes in the bedroom. Nina smiled in spite of herself, watching Jack, stark naked, leaning over the tub and testing the water was hilarious, at least in her opinion. After nearly a minute of standing hunched over the tub he climbed in, turning the hot tap up a bit in lieu of a more sustained shiver upon hitting the water.
"You taking a shower?" He asked her, collecting his soap from the side of the tub, he dunked it in the water and began frothing it between his hands.
Nina took a step towards the tub, he'd folded his feet so she had space to stand and take a shower. "And what were you going to do whilst I did?" She queried, raising an eyebrow.
"Enjoy the show." He joked, raising a leg out of the water and rubbing the soap over his hairy lower leg.
She leant in and kissed him, simultaneously reaching for the zipper on the back of her dress. There wasn't much point wasting the hot water. She let the champagne stained dress drop to the floor, on top of Jack's carefully laid towel, and pushed off her knickers. She climbed into the water onto of him, kissing him as she straddled his lap.
"Okay, I like this, but I thought you were having a shower? I was going to get a show." He joked with her, prodding her ribs.
"I thought that was what tonight was for?" She retorted, kissing him again.
Jack pulled her tighter onto his lap, "No tonight is for doing the traditional dating thing, a movie, like in high school." He confided.
Every statement seemed to need punctuating with a kiss, so they did that before she spoke. "So I'm getting felt up in the cinema, and then we're going to have car sex?" Nina checked, suddenly realising her damp hair was champagne sodded and not water logged. She gripped Jack's shoulders and leant backwards, dunking her head in the water and shaking it a little to get some champagne out.
Jack was momentarily distracted by the visual, and helped her sit upright on his lap again. "Yeah, any problems with that?"
-24-
Jack slipped an arm around her waist, pulling her to his hip, a position he was finding was very comfortable for the two of them. They filed out of the movie theatre with the other patrons at the end of the eleven o'clock showing of 'Monsters Inc', a childrens movie that had only come out the previous weekend. It was nearly one o'clock now, but neither of them were tired, having only been awake twelve hours and spent most of that time being lazy.
"What did you think then?" Nina asked as they stood out the front, looking in dismay at the parking lot, largely empty, noting where their rental car was parked half way across the lot.
"The little girl was cute." He replied, thinking of the animated child that ran around carrying a little teddy bear. It wasn't exactly manly for him to be thinking about how sweet a cartoon child was, but Nina took it for nostalgia about his own daughter, and Jack wasn't about to object.
"You don't think we should have seen something a little more..." Nina paused as she considered the titles they'd been presented with.
"Action packed?" She nodded, and Jack continued his prompting, "Gory? Sadistic? Raunchy?...Nah, we would have wanted to pay attention to it then." She laughed.
"Well, what do you want to do now?" She asked him. Tonight was really Jack's showboat, he picked the movie and now he was planning the rest of the night. It was quite early, for both of them, considering their nocturnal workaholism.
"Eat." Jack replied. He fished the keys out of his pocket, and they kept walking, there were still twenty or so parking spaces to go before their car. Jack glanced at her whilst she took in the traffic on the highway. "So, I was thinking..."
"Hmm."
"Earlier on you said you'd do anything I want." Jack reminded her, "on the grass, after the champagne."
Nina laughed, "Oh god." She dreaded what was coming.
"So, anyway I had a few creative ideas for tonight..." She brought her free hand to cradle her head as she thought of some of the more exploratory escapades they'd performed together - there had only been a few, they weren't afforded much time together in LA. She laughed as Jack continued. "not many, um, we can stop if they creep you out too much...asparagus, boiled, for use as a whip..."
Okay, he was joking, he had to be. A quick glance confirmed her suspicion, and she shook her head at him. "So where do you want to eat?" Jack changed the subject, as they approached the car. He pressed the release button on the car doors and the car clicked and the headlights flashed as it opened.
Nina let go of him and rounded the car as he paused by the drivers side door. "Not much will be open now, a diner? I don't know."
Jack nodded, and climbed into the car. "It's probably our best bet." He said, turning the keys in the ignition, the radio came on, quite loud and Nina turned it down - the singer was just repeating the words 'Strange Relationship' over and over, and after four repetitions it began to unnerve her, so she pressed the search button, and found another channel, this one playing classical piano music. Jack didn't seem perturbed by the lyrics of the song, but they stuck with Nina untill they found an all-night diner to eat in.
-24-
"I can't believe you've never done this before." Nina repeated for nearly the twentieth time since they'd gotten into the water. She glanced over at Jack, sitting on the surfboard, looking over his shoulder at the waves. He glanced over at her to let her know he'd heard her, but he didn't say anything, and quickly resumed watching the waves. "When I moved to LA it was the first thing I checked out." She told him, "This is surf-central, well, except Hawaii."
Jack spotted a wave that looked like it fit the criteria. "What do I do again?" He asked her - he wanted his first experience to be a good one.
"Just ride your board until the wave starts to crash, and they try and get on your knees, and then stand." Nina repeated, she'd given him an actual demonstration a few minutes ago. She was confident he knew what to do, just wanted to do it right the first time. She turned and looked at the approaching water. "Don't go for this one, though." She told him.
"Why not?" Jack asked.
"The next one looks like it will crash much harder." She told him, paddling backwards a little from her seat on the board. Lots of the surfers around them paddled forwards, deciding to take the small wave, whilst they moved back.
Nina flopped onto her stomach, dropping her hands in the water. "You ready?" She yelled over the surf.
Jack laughed, and then leant down on his board too. The wave arrived and crashed onto the rock table that supported the beach, propelling Nina, Jack and all the other surfers to the beach. Jack, much to his suprise, managed to climb to his feet on top of the board, and rode the wave in, arriving a few seconds before Nina.
He picked up his board and stood it up on the sand, holding onto it whilst Nina carried hers over to him. "Well?" She asked. Not expecting an answer when she noticed the massive grin.
"Wow."
"Fun?" She queried, hoisting the heavy slab of wood up on her hip. Jack nodded, and she leant in to kiss him, she noticed the top of his nose looked a little sore. "You need to put some lotion on." She told him, and they headed back up the beach towards their towels and few personal belongings.
Nina pulled out a bottle of suntan lotion and squirted some onto her fingers as Jack dropped himself onto the towel next to her, kicking up sand onto their things. "Come here." She told him, and he repositioned himself on the beach sheet, leaving a leg either side of her, to allow easy access to his face and kicking up another sand storm in the process. Nina made a series of little dots down his nose with the sun tan lotion, leaving another two on the ridge of his forehead, just above his eyebrows.
Jack snorted "You playing or are you putting suntan lotion on me?"
"A little of both." She replied, smudging the lotion into his sensitive, and probably already burnt skin.
She rubbed any remaining lotion into the palm of her hand. "You got any on?" He asked her, wrinkling his sticky nose.
"Yeah, did you put any on this morning?" She questioned, clicking the lid to the lotion bottle shut and pushing it back into her bag.
"No, but you probably wouldn't have done if you were wearing a wet suit." Jack replied, he slid a finger under one of the neck straps of her bikini. "I'm surprised this hasn't fallen off yet." He commented.
Nina turned and reached over his leg for her sunglasses. She managed to slip them on before Jack kissed her again, completing her outfit, black shades, black hair and black bikini. The bikini was a stringy halterneck, with ties on the briefs too, which had provided Jack with amusement for nearly an hour before they left the hotel, and then again when they got to the beach. It seemed like it was about to creep up on her again.
They were both soaking wet, having spent the last hour, maybe two, in the water, swimming out the the crest of the waves, and then back in again. Jack pulled her to him, as she was, turned with her side to him, and gripped her side where the ties were. It wasn't long before his skilled fingers grasped them, and had them untied.
Nina decided not to say anything this time, convinced that he'd been encouraged the last two times by her objections. Jack slid a hand into her briefs and sure enough, after a few moments, during which she desperately begged her mouth to keep shut, he tied the stretchy bands shut again, and let his hands hold her close again.
"It's nice here." Jack muttered to her as a seagull swooped low on the beach in front of them.
"Yeah." She said whistfully.
Jack leant into her ear "Thank you for this weekend." He said softly. Nina turned, surprised at his kind words and he kissed her, capturing her mouth before she could say anything. "I've had a wonderful time." He told her.
She nodded when they pulled apart, pressing her head against his chest and ignoring the world for a moment whilst it moved around her. Jack pulled his watch from its hiding place in the towel and looked at the time. He sighed, they needed to head back up to the hotel soon so they could pack and make it back to the city before rush hour traffic descended upon the world.
He pressed a kiss to her salty hair and squeezed her hip. "Do you want to try and catch another wave?" He asked her. He'd enjoyed surfing, and he hoped that he'd get another chance to do it.
Nina shook her head, not saying anything. Jack scowled, pulling away from her to get a look at her face. She sat upright with a bolt and mopped at her cheeks, seemingly watching the waves. "Are you okay?" He asked, now sitting behind her back.
She didn't respond, and he ran a hand down her back, it shone in the sun because of the water she'd absorbed off of his wet suit, and he traced a line down her back before she shrugged her shoulders, effectively swatting his hand away. "Nina?" Jack said again.
He listened as she pulled in a deep breath, and then watched as she shed her sunglasses and stood up. She picked up her board and looked down at him, extending a hand. Jack squinted up at her and then rose, collecting his board, deciding not to pry anymore.
-24-
Most of the drive back to the city was miserable. From twenty miles outside LA they stopped speaking to each other, and Nina drove in silence. Jack knew it was disappointing, having to return home, to their normal lives, after a weekend of fun together. He had to return to the problems he'd left with Teri and Kim, and see what she wanted now she'd read the divorce papers and had time to think about them, maybe consult with Kitty and Emma, his wife's closest friends.
Jack was surprised that Teri hadn't tried to call him again after Friday night. He'd told Kim he was away for the weekend, but he hadn't expected Teri to think of that as a reason not to call. He rested an arm on the window sill and watched the approaching skyline, lit up as the sun dropped in the sky, the view was beautiful, one you could only see from outside the city, unfortunately Jack rarely left. It would have been lovely to just stop at the side of the road and watch the rest of the sunset, but it wasn't a luxury that they had.
He glanced over at Nina in the drivers seat. It was a clear road, they'd ended up meeting LA after rush hour rather than before it, and Nina was just sitting there with her foot on the gas and the car in 5th gear, making minute adjustments to the steering wheel as she sat in the outside lane.
The silence stretched between them like the freeway did in front of them, and Jack sighed. He wanted to talk, but he didn't know what to say. "Lovely weather we're having, isn't it?"
Nina laughed, "It took you fifty miles to come up with that? God, you must be bored." She glanced over at him every other word as she spoke. "I thought you were good at getting people to talk."
"It's working, isn't it?" Jack pointed out. He reached down and grabbed Nina's hand on the seat. It was cold to touch, she was freezing. "You're freezing." He jerked his had away from her and turned the heater up to maximum. The roof was up, but the car was still a little cold.
Nina rubbed her hand on her legs, trying to warm it up with the friction. "I was thinking I'd drop you off at your place and then go home. I'll drop the car off at the rental place before work tomorrow." Seemed like a reasonable plan, so Jack nodded.
-24-
Jack was expecting there to be a flashing light on his answering machine when he got home, so, as Nina walked past him to use his bathroom before she set back out on the road, he pressed the playback button. "Hi, Jack, It's me..." Began the voice on the answer machine. It was Teri, telling him she'd call back later. The machine bleeped, that was message number 14. It moved on "Hi Jack, Kim just said that you're going out of town..." Message number 13. Jack pressed the fast forward button, and spun the tape on a bit to the more recent messages.
He pressed play again. "...anyway, it's completely up to you..." Teri's voice again, part of a large message. He went back to the begining of it and played it all the way through.
"Jack, look, I realise that I've left lots of messages and you're away for the weekend, I'm just hoping where ever you are, that they let you call and check your messages. I'm feeling a little more...me?...I'm here, at the house, I'm working from home all day, so if you want to call...Jack, I know we haven't spoken in a while, but I'd like to talk to you about this divorce...actually I'd like you to get rid of it. Jack if we can fix this, don't you think we should? I want to talk to you, I want to sort this out. If not for us, then for Kim, she's having a terrible time of this, Jack I....anyway, it's completely up to you, I'm here all day." The machine beeped and Jack reached out a hand to stop it, shutting off the machine just as it told him that was the last message.
He leant his head down into his hands, at some point during the telephone conversation he sat down on the arm of the couch next to the phone. What was he going to do? Kim was having a terrible time with their separation, and he still loved Teri. He'd never imagined that moving out would be permanent, he'd never once considered his tombstone would read anything other than "Jack Bauer, beloved husband and father - served his country with honour" What was he playing at? What was he doing? With Nina, with the divorce papers? Had he been serious about any of it?
Nina picked that precise moment to re-emerge from the bathroom. She brushed down her skirt and stood in his doorway. "Okay, well, I'd better get going." She commented, before noticing Jack. "Jack, what's wrong?"
The next chapter isn't crucial to the storyline. It will be the last chapter, and shouldn't be read until you've seen up to 11pm. Which is basically UKers. If you don't want to be spoilt, you can consider this the end of the story, it's pretty obvious what happens next.
"Well I definitely need a shower." Nina confided, stepping into the elevator, attached to the side of Jack's hip. She reached out and pressed the button for floor one, just above them, and waited for the door to close and Jack to talk.
"Why?" He asked, as though there could be some new reason to take a shower that he didn't know of.
"Champagne..." She prompted.
"I thought I got all of that?" Jack asked. He referred, of course, to the time he'd spent chasing the drops of champagne with his tongue after their al-fresco session on the grass. Something they were beginning to get used to.
Nina shook her head and held a strand of matted hair out in front of her face. They smiled and shared a kiss before the door opened on their floor. Jack reached into his pocket and pulled out their key card, passing it to Nina to open the door with, they walked down the corridor, stopping outside their room for Nina to let them in. "What do you want to do tonight?" He asked her, pushing open the door when he heard the door click.
"I didn't make any plans - I didn't know if you wanted to get some rest, or get some dinner." Nina followed him into the hotel, gladly agreeing to be lifted and kissed as the door clicked shut. "Or just stay in?" She suggested. This was their last night here, they were driving back tomorrow afternoon, Monday, January 15th, Martin Luther King day. It was probably the last time they'd share a bed for the entire night.
"Or see a movie?" Jack suggested, depositing her on the floor again, he wandered over to his night bag and rummaged through it, collecting his bathing pack.
"Is there one you particularly want to see?" Nina asked, folding her arms across her chest as she watched him from the vantage point in the centre of the room.
"No," Jack headed towards the bathroom, "I just want to see a movie with you."
Distracted, Nina smiled to herself for a minute, not noticing Jack was planning on taking a bath until the lights and taps went on in the bathroom. "Hey!" She yelled at him, plodding towards the bathroom. She put her arms around the doorframe and watched as he undid his belt, again.
"What?" Jack asked, tugging his shirt out of his trousers and pushing it off his shoulders.
"I said I was going to have a shower." She complained.
"I'm not stopping you." He muttered, not realising that the bath couldn't run at the same time as the shower, nor could their feet occupy the same space, he just wanted to be naked and wet, clean wouldn't have hurt either.
He dropped his trousers and boxers to the floor, having kicked off his shoes in the bedroom. Nina smiled in spite of herself, watching Jack, stark naked, leaning over the tub and testing the water was hilarious, at least in her opinion. After nearly a minute of standing hunched over the tub he climbed in, turning the hot tap up a bit in lieu of a more sustained shiver upon hitting the water.
"You taking a shower?" He asked her, collecting his soap from the side of the tub, he dunked it in the water and began frothing it between his hands.
Nina took a step towards the tub, he'd folded his feet so she had space to stand and take a shower. "And what were you going to do whilst I did?" She queried, raising an eyebrow.
"Enjoy the show." He joked, raising a leg out of the water and rubbing the soap over his hairy lower leg.
She leant in and kissed him, simultaneously reaching for the zipper on the back of her dress. There wasn't much point wasting the hot water. She let the champagne stained dress drop to the floor, on top of Jack's carefully laid towel, and pushed off her knickers. She climbed into the water onto of him, kissing him as she straddled his lap.
"Okay, I like this, but I thought you were having a shower? I was going to get a show." He joked with her, prodding her ribs.
"I thought that was what tonight was for?" She retorted, kissing him again.
Jack pulled her tighter onto his lap, "No tonight is for doing the traditional dating thing, a movie, like in high school." He confided.
Every statement seemed to need punctuating with a kiss, so they did that before she spoke. "So I'm getting felt up in the cinema, and then we're going to have car sex?" Nina checked, suddenly realising her damp hair was champagne sodded and not water logged. She gripped Jack's shoulders and leant backwards, dunking her head in the water and shaking it a little to get some champagne out.
Jack was momentarily distracted by the visual, and helped her sit upright on his lap again. "Yeah, any problems with that?"
-24-
Jack slipped an arm around her waist, pulling her to his hip, a position he was finding was very comfortable for the two of them. They filed out of the movie theatre with the other patrons at the end of the eleven o'clock showing of 'Monsters Inc', a childrens movie that had only come out the previous weekend. It was nearly one o'clock now, but neither of them were tired, having only been awake twelve hours and spent most of that time being lazy.
"What did you think then?" Nina asked as they stood out the front, looking in dismay at the parking lot, largely empty, noting where their rental car was parked half way across the lot.
"The little girl was cute." He replied, thinking of the animated child that ran around carrying a little teddy bear. It wasn't exactly manly for him to be thinking about how sweet a cartoon child was, but Nina took it for nostalgia about his own daughter, and Jack wasn't about to object.
"You don't think we should have seen something a little more..." Nina paused as she considered the titles they'd been presented with.
"Action packed?" She nodded, and Jack continued his prompting, "Gory? Sadistic? Raunchy?...Nah, we would have wanted to pay attention to it then." She laughed.
"Well, what do you want to do now?" She asked him. Tonight was really Jack's showboat, he picked the movie and now he was planning the rest of the night. It was quite early, for both of them, considering their nocturnal workaholism.
"Eat." Jack replied. He fished the keys out of his pocket, and they kept walking, there were still twenty or so parking spaces to go before their car. Jack glanced at her whilst she took in the traffic on the highway. "So, I was thinking..."
"Hmm."
"Earlier on you said you'd do anything I want." Jack reminded her, "on the grass, after the champagne."
Nina laughed, "Oh god." She dreaded what was coming.
"So, anyway I had a few creative ideas for tonight..." She brought her free hand to cradle her head as she thought of some of the more exploratory escapades they'd performed together - there had only been a few, they weren't afforded much time together in LA. She laughed as Jack continued. "not many, um, we can stop if they creep you out too much...asparagus, boiled, for use as a whip..."
Okay, he was joking, he had to be. A quick glance confirmed her suspicion, and she shook her head at him. "So where do you want to eat?" Jack changed the subject, as they approached the car. He pressed the release button on the car doors and the car clicked and the headlights flashed as it opened.
Nina let go of him and rounded the car as he paused by the drivers side door. "Not much will be open now, a diner? I don't know."
Jack nodded, and climbed into the car. "It's probably our best bet." He said, turning the keys in the ignition, the radio came on, quite loud and Nina turned it down - the singer was just repeating the words 'Strange Relationship' over and over, and after four repetitions it began to unnerve her, so she pressed the search button, and found another channel, this one playing classical piano music. Jack didn't seem perturbed by the lyrics of the song, but they stuck with Nina untill they found an all-night diner to eat in.
-24-
"I can't believe you've never done this before." Nina repeated for nearly the twentieth time since they'd gotten into the water. She glanced over at Jack, sitting on the surfboard, looking over his shoulder at the waves. He glanced over at her to let her know he'd heard her, but he didn't say anything, and quickly resumed watching the waves. "When I moved to LA it was the first thing I checked out." She told him, "This is surf-central, well, except Hawaii."
Jack spotted a wave that looked like it fit the criteria. "What do I do again?" He asked her - he wanted his first experience to be a good one.
"Just ride your board until the wave starts to crash, and they try and get on your knees, and then stand." Nina repeated, she'd given him an actual demonstration a few minutes ago. She was confident he knew what to do, just wanted to do it right the first time. She turned and looked at the approaching water. "Don't go for this one, though." She told him.
"Why not?" Jack asked.
"The next one looks like it will crash much harder." She told him, paddling backwards a little from her seat on the board. Lots of the surfers around them paddled forwards, deciding to take the small wave, whilst they moved back.
Nina flopped onto her stomach, dropping her hands in the water. "You ready?" She yelled over the surf.
Jack laughed, and then leant down on his board too. The wave arrived and crashed onto the rock table that supported the beach, propelling Nina, Jack and all the other surfers to the beach. Jack, much to his suprise, managed to climb to his feet on top of the board, and rode the wave in, arriving a few seconds before Nina.
He picked up his board and stood it up on the sand, holding onto it whilst Nina carried hers over to him. "Well?" She asked. Not expecting an answer when she noticed the massive grin.
"Wow."
"Fun?" She queried, hoisting the heavy slab of wood up on her hip. Jack nodded, and she leant in to kiss him, she noticed the top of his nose looked a little sore. "You need to put some lotion on." She told him, and they headed back up the beach towards their towels and few personal belongings.
Nina pulled out a bottle of suntan lotion and squirted some onto her fingers as Jack dropped himself onto the towel next to her, kicking up sand onto their things. "Come here." She told him, and he repositioned himself on the beach sheet, leaving a leg either side of her, to allow easy access to his face and kicking up another sand storm in the process. Nina made a series of little dots down his nose with the sun tan lotion, leaving another two on the ridge of his forehead, just above his eyebrows.
Jack snorted "You playing or are you putting suntan lotion on me?"
"A little of both." She replied, smudging the lotion into his sensitive, and probably already burnt skin.
She rubbed any remaining lotion into the palm of her hand. "You got any on?" He asked her, wrinkling his sticky nose.
"Yeah, did you put any on this morning?" She questioned, clicking the lid to the lotion bottle shut and pushing it back into her bag.
"No, but you probably wouldn't have done if you were wearing a wet suit." Jack replied, he slid a finger under one of the neck straps of her bikini. "I'm surprised this hasn't fallen off yet." He commented.
Nina turned and reached over his leg for her sunglasses. She managed to slip them on before Jack kissed her again, completing her outfit, black shades, black hair and black bikini. The bikini was a stringy halterneck, with ties on the briefs too, which had provided Jack with amusement for nearly an hour before they left the hotel, and then again when they got to the beach. It seemed like it was about to creep up on her again.
They were both soaking wet, having spent the last hour, maybe two, in the water, swimming out the the crest of the waves, and then back in again. Jack pulled her to him, as she was, turned with her side to him, and gripped her side where the ties were. It wasn't long before his skilled fingers grasped them, and had them untied.
Nina decided not to say anything this time, convinced that he'd been encouraged the last two times by her objections. Jack slid a hand into her briefs and sure enough, after a few moments, during which she desperately begged her mouth to keep shut, he tied the stretchy bands shut again, and let his hands hold her close again.
"It's nice here." Jack muttered to her as a seagull swooped low on the beach in front of them.
"Yeah." She said whistfully.
Jack leant into her ear "Thank you for this weekend." He said softly. Nina turned, surprised at his kind words and he kissed her, capturing her mouth before she could say anything. "I've had a wonderful time." He told her.
She nodded when they pulled apart, pressing her head against his chest and ignoring the world for a moment whilst it moved around her. Jack pulled his watch from its hiding place in the towel and looked at the time. He sighed, they needed to head back up to the hotel soon so they could pack and make it back to the city before rush hour traffic descended upon the world.
He pressed a kiss to her salty hair and squeezed her hip. "Do you want to try and catch another wave?" He asked her. He'd enjoyed surfing, and he hoped that he'd get another chance to do it.
Nina shook her head, not saying anything. Jack scowled, pulling away from her to get a look at her face. She sat upright with a bolt and mopped at her cheeks, seemingly watching the waves. "Are you okay?" He asked, now sitting behind her back.
She didn't respond, and he ran a hand down her back, it shone in the sun because of the water she'd absorbed off of his wet suit, and he traced a line down her back before she shrugged her shoulders, effectively swatting his hand away. "Nina?" Jack said again.
He listened as she pulled in a deep breath, and then watched as she shed her sunglasses and stood up. She picked up her board and looked down at him, extending a hand. Jack squinted up at her and then rose, collecting his board, deciding not to pry anymore.
-24-
Most of the drive back to the city was miserable. From twenty miles outside LA they stopped speaking to each other, and Nina drove in silence. Jack knew it was disappointing, having to return home, to their normal lives, after a weekend of fun together. He had to return to the problems he'd left with Teri and Kim, and see what she wanted now she'd read the divorce papers and had time to think about them, maybe consult with Kitty and Emma, his wife's closest friends.
Jack was surprised that Teri hadn't tried to call him again after Friday night. He'd told Kim he was away for the weekend, but he hadn't expected Teri to think of that as a reason not to call. He rested an arm on the window sill and watched the approaching skyline, lit up as the sun dropped in the sky, the view was beautiful, one you could only see from outside the city, unfortunately Jack rarely left. It would have been lovely to just stop at the side of the road and watch the rest of the sunset, but it wasn't a luxury that they had.
He glanced over at Nina in the drivers seat. It was a clear road, they'd ended up meeting LA after rush hour rather than before it, and Nina was just sitting there with her foot on the gas and the car in 5th gear, making minute adjustments to the steering wheel as she sat in the outside lane.
The silence stretched between them like the freeway did in front of them, and Jack sighed. He wanted to talk, but he didn't know what to say. "Lovely weather we're having, isn't it?"
Nina laughed, "It took you fifty miles to come up with that? God, you must be bored." She glanced over at him every other word as she spoke. "I thought you were good at getting people to talk."
"It's working, isn't it?" Jack pointed out. He reached down and grabbed Nina's hand on the seat. It was cold to touch, she was freezing. "You're freezing." He jerked his had away from her and turned the heater up to maximum. The roof was up, but the car was still a little cold.
Nina rubbed her hand on her legs, trying to warm it up with the friction. "I was thinking I'd drop you off at your place and then go home. I'll drop the car off at the rental place before work tomorrow." Seemed like a reasonable plan, so Jack nodded.
-24-
Jack was expecting there to be a flashing light on his answering machine when he got home, so, as Nina walked past him to use his bathroom before she set back out on the road, he pressed the playback button. "Hi, Jack, It's me..." Began the voice on the answer machine. It was Teri, telling him she'd call back later. The machine bleeped, that was message number 14. It moved on "Hi Jack, Kim just said that you're going out of town..." Message number 13. Jack pressed the fast forward button, and spun the tape on a bit to the more recent messages.
He pressed play again. "...anyway, it's completely up to you..." Teri's voice again, part of a large message. He went back to the begining of it and played it all the way through.
"Jack, look, I realise that I've left lots of messages and you're away for the weekend, I'm just hoping where ever you are, that they let you call and check your messages. I'm feeling a little more...me?...I'm here, at the house, I'm working from home all day, so if you want to call...Jack, I know we haven't spoken in a while, but I'd like to talk to you about this divorce...actually I'd like you to get rid of it. Jack if we can fix this, don't you think we should? I want to talk to you, I want to sort this out. If not for us, then for Kim, she's having a terrible time of this, Jack I....anyway, it's completely up to you, I'm here all day." The machine beeped and Jack reached out a hand to stop it, shutting off the machine just as it told him that was the last message.
He leant his head down into his hands, at some point during the telephone conversation he sat down on the arm of the couch next to the phone. What was he going to do? Kim was having a terrible time with their separation, and he still loved Teri. He'd never imagined that moving out would be permanent, he'd never once considered his tombstone would read anything other than "Jack Bauer, beloved husband and father - served his country with honour" What was he playing at? What was he doing? With Nina, with the divorce papers? Had he been serious about any of it?
Nina picked that precise moment to re-emerge from the bathroom. She brushed down her skirt and stood in his doorway. "Okay, well, I'd better get going." She commented, before noticing Jack. "Jack, what's wrong?"
The next chapter isn't crucial to the storyline. It will be the last chapter, and shouldn't be read until you've seen up to 11pm. Which is basically UKers. If you don't want to be spoilt, you can consider this the end of the story, it's pretty obvious what happens next.