6:15 a.m.

Okay, really. Eggs? She definitely smelt eggs. A cough. She definitely heard a cough. Oh my God, his cough. He was still there. I mean, of course he was. He didn't come across as the type to bail, but to think that and to know that are two very different things. For Renee it is a delightful difference. There are 30,000 things going through her mind in this moment, the first of which being that she is so glad she rearranged her room a few weeks ago so that her bed is not facing the kitchen anymore. Because she's going to need a few minutes to process this before she sees him again.

Speaking of seeing him, what even happened last night? Thinking this hard alerts Renee to the headache she'd developed overnight, but she doesn't want to stir for an Advil because when she steps foot on the wood floor, she wants to know exactly what went down in her apartment the night before. She would love to know what all it means, too, but that may be asking a little too much. So she'll settle for simply remembering.

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9:15 p.m.

He was kissing her, and he was doing so passionately. But she could also feel the reservation. She honestly feared more than anything that he would come to regret this. Not that he would leave now or say he just can't. She fears him staying and that he'll take it back later. As if Jack Bauer isn't unpredictable enough already, there is an added risk because he truly doesn't know how much time he has left. And he would have every right to decide that this is not something he wants to take on in the end.

The first dose of Kim's cells were helping. Which is a good thing because within the first few hours of his diagnosis, Jack was on the fast track to death. Dymensia and paralysis weren't taking their time delivering him to that final destination. She was surprised at how much she cared. Not just as a human being, but as someone who all of the sudden had a lot to lose with Jack Bauer. It was a dangerous place to be, she knew. And he knew it too. It's why he could hardly look at her after he concurred with Larry's decision that he should sit out. His faint attempt at humor, "I always knew we would agree about something," was more heartbreaking than comic relief. He walked away and took off his jacket, making it painfully obvious that he was having to consciously not look her in the eye. Probably a good thing, too, since it was all she could do to hold back her own tears—tears that she hadn't controlled when Larry first told her about Jack's exposure to the weapon and tears she knew would make their way back out if Jack chose to bring her into this moment of defeat with him. After Jack started convulsing, it was Renee who desperately asked Sunny if there was anything they could do to help Jack. If not to heal him, then to delay this process. If not to delay the process then to make it less painful. She was probably asking just as much for herself as she was for Jack's sake. It frightened her that his interest was becoming so closely intertwined with hers. It was the look in her eyes as she pleaded with Sunny to do something that triggered an idea in the CDC higher up. Did he have any living relatives nearby? Renee knew his file, that he has a daughter married to a private security contractor living in L.A. There was a mad dash to access their information and it was Renee who made the call to Kim—the call that saved Jack's life. In more ways than one, as far as he is concerned.

But he's still sick. She still feels now how she felt when he first got to the FBI building after being exposed—she has something to lose here. It's scary. It's why she knows there is still a hesitation behind the passion in his kiss and her embrace. At the same time, it is pretty flattering that, in this moment, he is choosing to be here. With her. She really doesn't want him to regret it. Because while she could lose it, at least she has this something. And as far as she is concerned, this is worth it.

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6:18 a.m.

Yeah, she remembers her thought process last night. Thinking back on it, it still makes a lot of sense. On top of that, the fear she had that he might regret all if this is quelled by the fact that he is now making eggs in her kitchen and not halfway to L.A., determined that he can't do this because there are only a precious few relationships he has time to consider. Well, that part is true, he does only have time for a precious few. Despite the very dire circumstances, it makes her feel a bit like a schoolgirl to realize that he considers her among those relationships worth investing in now. So, initial freak out—the one over the big picture, the "is this a good idea" question—subsided, she is able to remember clearly what went down the night before. It makes her want to run to kitchen to see him, rather than continue to avoid him like she's been doing for a long couple of minutes now. But for clarity's sake, she'll conduct a quick review…

The hesitation got the best of them after, say, 15 minutes. Which was fine because that's really all she had hoped for, remember? By that point she was leaned up against the cabinet with his arms firmly placed on the countertop, locking them in. Her arms were resting gently around his back as he leaned into her. There was something so intimate about that fact that his hands weren't all over her. They weren't on her face pulling her into the kiss nor were they keeping her away. She had the choice at any moment to put her hands between them and back this up. He kept his hands from being a barrier or a pull by leaning more into the countertop with the weight on his arms than into her. It was a confident but unassuming position—an extremely vulnerable one on his part. In such vulnerability, the occasions when he would put a hand up to her cheek or brush past her hip were that much more stimulating. Their hearts raced as they continued this tradition of giving each other more and more to lose. When Jack though about it in those terms, he slowly pulled back. Not abruptly, like earlier when it was a hesitation to be here at all. This time it was out of a hesitation to go there too quickly. Not there as in sex, that's not the issue. There, where happily ever after begins to become the expectation—something he's clearly not in the position to offer. One hand came off the counter and onto her upper back. The other hand reached first for her glass, then for his. He handed a glass to her. When he picked his glass up, the free hand ran down her back, to her hip, skipped to her elbow, down her arm and interlocked with her fingers.

"Come on." He said it in the deepest whisper he possibly could.

She was game. For whatever. Because even though he had broken the kiss, she sensed this time around that he wanted to stay. The physical intimacy didn't have to immediately manifest itself into that in order to be significant. Hell, she was halfway to the moon over this hand hold they had going. So imagine her delight when, after he led her to the living room couch, he took her foot into one of his hands and begin to hit pressure points she didn't even know were KILLING until he began to rub over them. With his other hand he took consistent sips of probably the best tasting wine she's ever had—though, she thought, it could just be the company. He knew for a fact that it was the company because he picked the wine up at some run down shop a block away in a rush to get to Renee's apartment as soon as he could. Before he lost the determination and all. The further he got from Kim's hotel and her words of motivation, the more he doubted even going to see Renee at all.

Renee matched Jack's pace with regards to the drinking—although it was her idea to pour the second round. She couldn't remember who suggested the third round. Interspersed between the sips was a conversation so random and so easy. It felt like having a pen pal—someone with no real personal history that you can just lay it all out there for. It also felt like having that friend who can make you laugh both at the irony of tough situations and at the inherent humor of comical situations. His was mostly irony, but she saw him smile much more in the span of a few hours than she ever thought she would in his lifetime (however limited it may now be). She hadn't told him about Ben because she didn't want Jack to feel like she equated their sicknesses. She didn't want to automatically position herself as the caregiver in whatever relationship it was they were starting up here. The fact that Jack is sick is unavoidable, but at least for a little while she wants to escape the reality that she may end up helping another important man in her life die. She wants to be a woman in love with an amazing man, not a woman who has something to offer to a man who will soon be in need of a lot of care. Still, she knew she just wasn't going to be able to hold a whole lot back from Jack. So when Teri came up (well, she came up early on in the conversation—the basic this is who I am and this is why introductory segment; this time it was much more the this is who Teri was and why I loved her and why I miss her and what I've learned spiel), Renee prepared herself to let loose of the one story she likes to stay away from—with her parents, with Larry, with herself. Otherwise, she's an open book. Especially with strangers. She loves finding a way to relate and will use just about anything in her history to find a commonality within minutes of meeting someone. Here Jack was beginning to bring up the commonality they have in losing basically the closest person in their lives, though he was unaware she had an equivalent. Not a spousal loss, but a deep cutting loss all the same.

"We used to," he stopped to let out a little sigh of a laugh. A sort of drunk sigh of a laugh. He also sort of corrected himself "She used to turn on music, especially if I came in really tense from work, and make me dance..." Jack was looking down at his glass. "Really it was more of like a hug going in a circle…. Like she was trying to disguise the hug to nurse my pride… I always thought it was funny because… I mean, who's dignity is better maintained by dancing than by giving a hug?" Teri knew Jack didn't want an overt show of affection straight out of a long night of work. She knew he didn't want to feel soft or admit that he just needed an embrace. So she created an environment that gave him no choice but to surrender. To let loose and to hold her. She also knew the right moments to do it and accepted the fact that sometimes he really did just need to go to bed.

Jack laughed again to himself, staying with the memory for just a minute longer. Renee didn't want to come on too strong or even come near a comparison with Teri, but she felt overwhelmed by how boldly the desire to have a few moments like that again was written all over his face. Also, this could be her out from discussing Ben. Despite Jack's openness, she just couldn't. Yet.

They were sitting there, still on the couch, when the iPod playlist started over. Same as it did when she answered the door at least two hours earlier, the Dancing in the Moonlight melody filled the room. She laughed a bit to herself and Jack looked up.

That attention gave her no choice, so she bounced up and took his hand. He laughed, too—a little nervously, like he felt bad for making her feel like she needed to do this. But he consented. The beat was fast and fun. He found moments to twirl her, and to her immense satisfaction, go into a dip. She didn't know people even really did that anymore. Apparently they did. So they danced. Like that. For more than one song. And that was something Jack could get used to again.