11:36 p.m.

Somewhere between Dancing in the Moonlight and Jon McLaughlin's Human, they journeyed to her bedroom. And somewhere between the living room and her bed they started kissing. They had been laughing. Mainly because it felt so awkwardly cliché to be twirling around the living room. Who knew Jack Bauer was this person? The funny part is that it felt cliché while they both knew they were the furthest thing from stereotypical. While they moved about jovially, there was a sincerity in each action. Each secure hold he had on her hip, every firm grasp of her hand as she spun out and back in. They laughed, but the room was running out of air. Not only was their breathing getting more tired, but they both felt how serious this attraction was becoming. Plus there was the wine factor. It was all enough to make her stop breathing. After a final spin she retracted and ended up snug against his chest. She still had her breath there. She lost it when he pulled his shoulders back, looked for and then met her gaze. The impact of her body against his stopped them cold in their tracks. Still. Just staring. At each other. And even though they both had a glossy look indicative of their collective sleep deprivation and alcohol consumption, there was a mutual understanding that this was okay. They were both drunk enough to restart up the kissing, but not too drunk that they would have to question the sincerity come morning.

So, yeah, that's where the kissing started. He kept one arm around her back. He used the hand that held Renee's tightly when she spun back into his embrace to push a piece of hair behind her ears. She had been looking down, but his touch brought her face up. So he kissed her. Her arms found their way around his back, with both of her hands resting up on his shoulder blades. Her back was facing the bedroom and it was Renee who began to pull the two of them in that direction. She stepped backwards up the couple of stairs that made her apartment unleveled. There was an almost trip that made them both smile into the kiss as they made their way to the middle of the room.

He suddenly pulled back, coughing deeply—an interruption that caught them both off guard. This wasn't a cold cough. He sounded like an asthmatic and had to physically bend forward, face parallel to the ground to get any relief. She responded quickly by making her way to the bathroom for a glass of water. When she returned, he gratefully accepted the cup and downed its contents. He set it down on a table at the foot of the bed and whispered a deep and exhausted "thank you."

"Sure." She responded just looking at him. Kind of at a loss about where to go from there. She really hoped this wasn't coming across as pity. Compassion, okay. But the last thing she wanted was to make him feel pitiful. So she reinstated the kiss. And put her hands on his back… underneath his shirt. Her hands were cold against his warm and worn skin. She immediately felt a scar and was glad to be reminded of Jack's wounds while they stood there, eyes closed, locked in a kiss. She kicked herself yesterday when she froze at the sight of the physical sacrifices Jack has made in the name of their country. He apologized then, like they were his fault. Like he should be ashamed of them. Now, as her hands glided over 1, 2, 3… 3 scars in just a few inches of his lower left back, she felt like she needed to make up for her stares. For the fact that she ever made him feel guilty for being wounded. In more ways than one over the past couple of days, actually. They weren't something to apologize for, and they honestly didn't scare her. But upon seeing them for the first time, Renee stood majorly corrected on a whole new level. She was finding that Jack not only weighs the psychological consequences of his actions, he is also willing to sustain the physical consequences of everything he asked other men and women to do. And from the looks of it, he basically had suffered every possible wound. He was even willing, she found out that day, to take death. It was hard to read him as he sat in that dark room in the FBI building, but she could tell he had been struggling to come to terms with the diagnosis. It would have been easier to stand there and talk to him if her original assumptions about Jack had been true—that nothing really affected him anymore. But there he was, timid almost, putting on his best business face ("you can tell me Larry is moving on Starkwood"). There he sat affected. So was she.

But now they were here and for the moment he was okay. Both of his thumbs grazed her cheekline as she moved her hands to his torso and tugged at the hem of his shirt. He stopped and looked at her. Frozen for half a second (it felt like 15 minutes, mind you) until he took her hands, still grasping the shirt, and lifted them above his head. She reached out to his shoulders as he leaned back in to the kiss. Her hands moved down his bare arms until both were intertwined in his fingers. He walked forward, pushing her along with him, to the side of the bed and sat her down there. She scooted back to make room for him and felt his hand run the length of her side, over her hips and to her thigh. He moved back up the same path and repeated the movement, this time taking the top of her sweatpants with him. The look in her eyes when he pulled back gave him consent to proceed, so he delicately slid both legs of the pants down to her ankles and tossed the garment to the floor. He returned to the head of the bed where she pulled his neck to her lips. And they did that for a while.

Well until, as abruptly as before, he moved back and began coughing. She started to get up but he gestured with his hands and his expression for her to stay. Quickly grabbing the cup from the foot of the bed, he moved to the bathroom to grab another drink. She heard his gulps from the bed. When he returned, there was a consensus that this needn't necessarily happen right now. Not that it couldn't or it shouldn't but it just wouldn't add to or take away from the attraction they currently felt. They could be perfectly content to lay there and fit. Both understood this without speaking a word. Jack pulled back the sheets as he got back into the bed and she joined him there, under the comforter, head on his chest. His feet found hers. She curled her toes around the bottom of his jeans while he put his right hand underneath her shirt on the small of her back. And they did that for a while.

Life was still and okay. There was not even a pressure to talk, really. After some time, though, he could sense her eyes wandering.

"What are you thinking?" he asked blatantly.

She looked up. "You want to know?"

He looked down, worried for a second that he should be nervous for her response. "Yeah," he said with that underlying "of course" tone.

She ran a finger over his right collarbone, then to his midsection, then up to the shoulder where her head rested. She lifted herself up and rolled onto her stomach, supporting her weight on her right elbow and resting her left hand on his abdomen. She looked contemplatively at his torso. As carefully and gently as she could, she let out a "Where did they come from?"

Renee hoped he knew that she genuinely wanted to know.

He wasn't expecting that.