Chloe never thought she'd be wistfully recalling the days when pushy outside agencies would send the likes of Miles Papazian to annoy her. While he was nasty and had people skills that made her own look well developed, he was at least somewhat capable. Abelard was an ass and a moron. Obviously, he got where he was by being an obsequious sycophant and not do to an impressive skill set.

Undoing the damage he'd done took hours, even with the help of her staff and Nick Mankuba, the Division tech whom had been so delighted to witness her verbal smack down of his boss. In his attempts to get around her firewalls, Abelard had corrupted several of her systems and she'd had to reboot from the restore point she'd set up before leaving. It was a good thing she had done that, or they'd have lost days worth of protocol and data analysis.

Occasionally, she glanced over at Jack, who was quietly working on the written report Graham had asked for. After a while, he had abandoned the set forms and found a pen and paper, hand writing pages and pages of information. The more he wrote, the more Chloe worried, as his expression changed, grew more haunted and detached and his grip on the pen became a knuckle whitening strangle hold.

"I'll be back," she told Nick, rising from her chair and wincing at the protest from her muscles. She'd been hunched over her computer for hours and there was still a lot of work to do, but she wanted to try and talk Jack into taking a break. He needed one psychologically and she needed one physically. Of course she knew he would want to keep on working but if she asked him to come get a snack with her, she figured he'd relent.

Circling the station Jack was using, she made sure to approach well within his line of sight. If Jack was about to have one of his moments, she didn't think the entire floor needed to witness it, so limiting any surprise for him was a good idea. "Jack," she said quietly, hoping to draw his attention without startling him. "Jack?"

After her second call, he jumped slightly, eyes darting around the room before settling on her face. Confusion flitted through his eyes before they cleared and he said, "Yes, Chloe. Are you okay?"

Again with that. It seemed like that phase was a part of a significant part of a number of their conversations.

"My back hurts, I have a headache and I'm hungry," Chloe said without preamble, ignoring his zone out. It seemed to be the strategy that worked for them. "Come get a snack with me."

Jack blinked at her, then looked down at his copious report. Flipping the notebook closed, he pushed back from the desk and rose, keeping the report in hand. "Okay," he agreed easily enough and followed her docilely to the break room.

Calm Jack was fine. She even liked it when he was agreeable, but there was a fine line. Gentle prodding would be required to shake him back into the comparatively good frame of mind that he had begun the day with.

By this point, Bill, Karen, Nadia, Rivers and Reese were facing off against Graham and Abelard up in the office. From the looks of things, there was a teleconference involved. They all looked serious, but Graham was the only one who looked like his head was going to explode. She figured Abelard was too stupid to realize he was in deep shit.

Hopefully, the entire Graham/Abelard debacle would be resolved soon. That would certainly help move things along.

But for now, her concern was finding something to eat. Apparently, the baby was hungry today.

Peering into the fridge, Chloe gingerly poked through the contents. There were a truly terrifying number of giant, high sugar, super caffeinated energy drinks and a massive stack of Styrofoam takeout containers. Most of those seemed fit for the biohazard bin, not eating though. Then she smiled, finding what she was looking for.

Retrieving the two small plastic cups, she found a pair of spoons then sat on the lumpy sofa, motioning Jack to join her. When he sat, she handed him a cup and said, "I think you'll like this."

Jack smiled and peeled back the little tinfoil lid. Lifting it, he sniffed and said, "Raspberry? And Chocolate."

"Yup," she said, spooning some into her mouth and returning his smile. "They're so good. Chocolate and Raspberry Parfaits."

Sampling the treat, Jack nodded. "You're right. This is good."

They sat for a few minutes, enjoying the quiet and the food. When Chloe finished hers, she looked down at her still flat stomach and asked, "Happy now?"

Jack looked puzzled for a moment, then actually grinned. "Little baby O'Brien had the munchies?"

"That's my story," she smirked, then shrugged. "It's better than the vomiting. I wasn't liking that."

He grimaced in sympathy, then followed her gaze to her tummy. "How far along are you?"

"Eight maybe nine weeks," she sighed. "I think I was in denial. The doctor said they can do an ultrasound here, cause things are so crazy out there I might have trouble getting an OB appointment."

"Almost done with the first trimester," he mused with a nod. "Most of Teri's morning sickness ended around the 3 month mark but then the weird cravings began. Of course, by then I was so glad that she'd stopped cursing me that I was perfectly happy getting up at 2 am and going out to hunt for…all sorts of noxious food combinations that I won't mention just yet."

Chloe nodded. "My stomach and I thank you."

"So back ache, head ache, nausea, cravings," Jack ticked off her symptoms. Hearing them all listed together made her shake her head and wonder how she had convinced herself she was just over worked.

"Pretty much textbook signs."

She nodded. "And my boobs are really tender."

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she wished she could just bite them back. Jack's eyes widened, ticked to her aforementioned chest and she felt her face reddening. Slowly, his eyes slid up to meet hers, corners of his mouth twitching with suppressed mirth. "They're bigger, too."

For a moment, it was like the words just didn't register in her brain. It seemed an outright impossibility that he had said that. Then, she realized that he had. "Jack!" she snickered and yelped at the same time, far more amused than scandalized. He lost the battle to contain his own laughter and the sound of it dissipated the last of the lingering discomfort from her blurted statement. "You," she declared through her own chuckles (because she didn't giggle, god damn it! Stupid hormones!), "Should not know that!"

He rolled his eyes at her. "I'd be more worried if I didn't," he smirked, settling back into the couch. "I'm a very observant man after all."

She made an inarticulate sound of mock outrage that was softened by her grin as she reached over and thumped her palm against his shoulder, careful to hit the one she knew not to have had a recent encounter with a knife. The fresh wound she'd seen there looked like someone had used a blade to dig around in his flesh, but Jack was typically Jack and acted like it was a paper cut.

Sobering a bit, she said, "Have you…I mean, I know you haven't, but you should think about making a visit to medical yourself."

"I think they're probably a little busy dealing with folks in worse shape than me," he said, then scowled. "Besides…you know they're going to want to sick a shrink on me."

Yeah, the shrinks would be fighting to talk with him, see what the 20 months of torture and captivity had done to his psyche. Chloe was willing to bet anything those same shrinks would be fighting to get away from him after a few minutes. Another thing she and Jack shared was a distain for that particular profession and Chloe had always enjoyed messing with their heads when the higher ups decided she 'needed to speak with someone'. She took great pride in the fact that she'd made the last one cry and Nadia said the man had retired and taken up raising Alpaca's in some flyover state.

She could care less about the company shrinks, but she did think Jack needed a doctor to look after his physical well being. His eating habits over the past several days said he was severely deprived of vitamins and minerals and craving them. The gallon of OJ with each breakfast and the near constant chugging of milk was a major clue.

Time to pull out the big guns.

"I'd feel better if you at least got a check up," she said, placing a hand on her belly and looking over at him. "You know I worry about you."

His expression immediately became more serious and he started nodding. "Okay, I'll go down there before we leave…Hey! Are you trying to guilt me into giving in to you?!"

Damn, she must have smiled too quickly. "Yes," she admitted with a shrug, then cocked her head to the side. "Is it working? I'm not too good at this sort of thing."

Jack sighed but chuckled again. "Yeah, I'll go before we leave."

"Thank you," she replied, settling against the back of the couch, her shoulder brushing his arm. "Seriously though, I don't want you keeling over from some undetected internal injury. That would suck."

"Agreed," he said, spooning another small bite of parfait into his mouth. He was still eating very slowly so as to allow his stomach to adapt to foods again…aside from the occasional liquids binge. The one time he had eaten quickly had been the day before when she had handed him a roast beef sandwich. It had disappeared in half a minute and he'd ended up vomiting not long after.

It hadn't been pleasant and had caused a bit of a chain reaction with her touchy tummy. Yeah, nothing said 'I trust you enough to be totally disgusting in front of you' like sharing a toilet bowl while you both threw up everything you'd eaten. Ever.

Okay, she really didn't want to think about that. "So," she said, changing the topic before icky thoughts cause a reappearance of her snack, "I figure I should be expecting the little one to make his or her presence visible pretty soon."

"Probably," he said, then smirked. "You know, lots of people see a baby belly and have to touch it. It's like instinct. You may want to set up some ground rules to limit the casualties."

Chloe frowned, not liking the idea that people would violate her personal space like that and actually touch her. Being pregnant did not make her a petting zoo, God damn it! She'd definitely have to lay down the law when the time came. Seriously, if anyone started pawing at her, they were gonna draw back a bloodied stump.

"I hadn't thought of that," she said. "Thanks for the warning. Not big on the random touching."

He nodded quiet for a moment, contemplating the nearly empty pudding cup, then asked, "Does it…I touch you. If it makes you uncomfortable, I can…."

"No, it's okay," she interrupted, scrunching up her face as she tried to figure out exactly how to explain something she really didn't understand herself. "We've known each other a long time…It's actually kind of comforting."

"Yeah," he murmured, turning his head to look at her. "When you hugged me the other day…it was the first time in a long time I didn't want to avoid physical contact with someone."

People said they were cold, hard…and sometimes they were right. The jobs kind of required them to be, but there were moments…their moments. The walls came down when they were together or rather they merged, each protecting and supporting the other.

Sitting on the break room sofa, their empty pudding cups on the table beside them, neither of them were hard. They didn't have to be.

She smiled and bumped his arm with her shoulder then let her head drop against his shoulder for a moment. They had peace briefly amongst the chaos of the CTU.

But of course, all moments end.

Nadia strode into the room, blinking when she saw them but thankfully choosing not to comment. "There you are. Come on. We need you two." With that, she spun, quickly moving back in the direction she had come from.

Exchanging a look, Jack and Chloe rose. They were needed.

Story of their freakin' lives.

TBC…………

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