geeky_agent | OOM: Visiting Family

Current Mood: worried

OOM: Visiting Family

She almost wishes Caiti would be there.

It would mean more questions and more problems, yes. They'd still have to explain Caiti having met Jack already in Morocco two years prior and she just knew that wouldn't go over well.

Still, she can't help but wonder if maybe it would be better to get everything out in the open now. (Not everything.) Caiti had always been good at dealing with problems between her sister and brother and it sounded like she and Jack had gotten along pretty well and she hadn't seen her in months...

This had probably been a bad idea but it was too late to back out now.

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Chris is trying to talk to Tori as well as watch the conversation between her brother and Jack. There's a some relief (and a little guilt) when Jeannie tells her daughter to be patient.

"Hey Ryan," she says finally, moving over to hug him hello. "It looks like you two have already done the introductions."

"Hey big sis," Ryan hugs her back, realizing that he couldn't remember the last time he saw her in person and their conversations had been awkward and stilted for months, one calling the other more out of obligation than any need to talk. Jeannie pretends that she's not watching the interaction and Ryan keeps his arm around Chris for a few moments longer than mere politeness. "I was beginning to think that you'd taken a wrong turn and wound up in Canada."

"It was close there," she says with a laugh. Still nervous and unsure of what to say but it's good to see her family again. "It's been a while since I've been here."

Two years but it felt like a lifetime and that last visit (http://geeky-agent.livejournal.com/16716.html) hadn't been so pleasant.

"You guys must be starving after your drive," Jeannie says, holding Tori's hand. "C'mon inside, I'll show you where you can put your things and get you some food."

"Thanks," Jack says, picking up the bags and following everyone inside, "Where should I put the bags?"

Or, in other words, will he and Chris be sleeping in the same room?

With a brief glance to her husband, Jeannie says, "You two can take the first bedroom on the left. Just go up the stairs and it will be the first door you see."

"All right."

Chris suspects they're all lucky Jeannie answered before Ryan did but she doesn't let this show. Instead she merely glances at Jack before telling her brother and sister-in-law, "We'll be back in a few," before going up the stairs.

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(http://geeky-agent.livejournal.com/35655.html?thread=569671#t569671)

Jack gives her a bemused smile. "Well your brother didn't run off to find one of your dad's guns, so obviously it didn't go too badly."

He lets go of her hand so he can wrap his arm around her waist. "It went all right. I think he's still going to be suspicious about some things, and things we don't agree on, but we seemed to have some kind of an understanding. It wasn't exactly a CTU interrogation."

"Thank God for that," she says with a snort. Then she looks up at him with a keen interest. "Did you tell him anything about why you left CTU?"

"Just that I couldn't do field work for medical reasons, and that I wanted to have a life and spend time with my family, which CTU didn't allow me to do. Did you talk to Jeannie?" he asks.

"Yeah, I did." She relaxes a little, resting her head on his shoulder. "I told her the same thing when she asked."

"Well at least we have our stories straight," Jack says with a smile. "Mostly Ryan was just worried about you working at CTU. I think he wanted me to try and talk you out of it."

"That's not surprising." Another reason why she was reluctant to tell him much about her work or what's going on in her life, even if it did drive a wedge between them.

"If it makes any difference, I said I wasn't going to encourage you to leave. I tried to explain why you'd want to work there, but I don't think he bought it."

She looks up at him with a smile and gives him a small kiss. "It does." Lacing her fingers in his, Chris adds, "He doesn't like that I went back there. I don't expect that to change any time soon."

Or ever.

"It's going to take him a while to know that you're going to be okay, that you're going to be happy," he says, squeezing her hand. "I couldn't lie to him and say that things hadn't been kind of rough in the last few months, but I did tell him that they're a lot better now."

"What did you tell him?" Nothing they had discussed would really explain why she'd been going through a difficult time recently.

"Not much. I mentioned that a friend of ours--someone not working at CTU--died a couple months ago, but nothing else specific. I told him I couldn't tell him any more than you could."

"I didn't tell him about that," she admits quietly, all at once defensive and guilty.

"If he asks, you could say that you were busy at the time, helping with the arrangements. And it's something that's believeable that you wouldn't want to talk about. Anyway, he knows that much," Jack says with a slight shrug.

She nods and falls quiet, trying to relax now that the evening was over.

After a moment, "So, what do you think?"

He gives her a smile. "I think even with the awkwardness, I like your family. It's just going to take a while for things to be comfortable between us."

"You like them?" She asks, surprised but smiling. It's not that she expected him to say otherwise but sometimes, with the way Ryan could be, she wasn't sure.

"Yeah. I mean it's not like your brother and I were arguing or anything, which is a pretty good start at least." His smile turns wry. "No blood, no bruises, no broken bones; turned out pretty well, I think."

"That's only because Ryan and I haven't had a chance to talk much yet," she says dryly, only half-joking.

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