Life was good, life was really good actually. Business was booming, Tarin and Lee had reconciled most of the problems they'd been dealing with over the past few weeks and nobody in the world seemed to suspect that there was anything out of the ordinary going on in the little Medium Shop near Central Park.

It never ceased to amaze Tarin that nobody suspected his mutant abilities. Either he was really that bad as a medium, or he was simply that good of an actor. Tarin preferred to believe the latter of the two. The public seemed to agree with his assessment of the situation though, he had return customers. Granted, a majority of these customers had actual spirits with them that genuinely needed communication. Some though, seemed to buy his fakey medium lines hook, line, and sinker. Tarin felt a little guilty continually taking money from those people, but it was the way the proverbial cookie crumbled. He had to keep up the pretense, besides, he liked to think that he helped people through things in their lives. It was amazing how much a person would open up when they thought that they were trying to commune with the dead.

Then there was Lee. Lee was everything Tarin could have asked for in a partner, lover, and friend all wrapped into one, and finally some of the serenity had seeped back into their lives. Things were back to how they'd been before the registration act, maybe even better. They were tentatively planning their wedding here and there, mostly at night in whispered fantasy ideas...but it was still planning.

Tarin looked up from his daydream as the bell over the door jingled and a 'regular' made her way into the shop. Lee greeted her a bit absently and Tarin smiled over his shoulder as he led the girl to the back of the shop.

It was interesting how things worked out. Tarin had just been thinking about the cases where he helped someone in a psychological sense without ever seeing a spirit in their company. This girl was one of those cases. In the past, Tarin would have said that this girl was a stunner, she had bright red hair that fell in large loose curls past her shoulders and bright blue eyes. The funny thing was though, that Tarin had changed, he hardly noticed her...or the obvious effort she'd put into her appearance. Carefully distressed, showing just a tiny bit of skin, showing off her assets and slim figure.

Tarin had started the reading as usual, gone through all the motions, eyes completely shut so he didn't notice as the girl gradually moved herself closer and closer to him. Tarin didn't notice it at all until he caught a whiff of perfume that he knew Lee wasn't wearing.

Opening his eyes, Tarin had found himself staring into those blue eyes much closer than he'd have imagined them being even after he'd envisioned the distance between them as less than it had started.

Jerking backwards slightly at the proximity, Tarin's eyes widened as he felt a hand on his knee as the redhead leaned even closer...then she was on him. Shock caused complete inability to move as she managed to situate herself across his lap, hands locking into his hair as she kissed him with what Tarin could only describe later as wanton abandon.

Tarin was flattered, the girl was young, probably in her early 20's probably younger than Lee...Lee...this was bad...very bad.

Still unbelievably stunned at the sudden turn of events, and not wanting to simply unceremoniously dump what he knew to be an emotionally fragile young person onto the floor, Tarin firmly placed his hands on her waist and began the process of getting her the hell away from him as quickly as possible.

In a way, Lee found it hard to believe that the last weeks had actually even happened. Once she and Tarin had gotten things sorted out again, life had gone back to normal. Actually, better than normal, what with adding in the nighttime planning for not only their wedding, but their trip to Texas. Lee didn't think she had ever been happier. She hadn't thought she'd have ever been this happy in her life, yet here they were, and other than a certain piece of legislation that she had no control over, Lee didn't think she'd have changed a single thing in her life even if she'd had been able to.

Tarin's birthday was coming up quickly too, even if he wasn't saying anything about it. Now that Lee knew the date, she wasn't bringing it up either. She knew when she had to be ready, knew what she was planning on doing, so there was no sense talking about it and having Tarin try to tell her not to do anything for his birthday. Not that what she was planning was going to actually cost her any money or real effort, and Tarin would like it. He had said the previous fall that he wanted her to teach him how to play the guitar, so Lee thought that was a good time to start. Maybe not the naked guitar lessons he had asked for, but lessons nonetheless.

And to add to that, Lee thought she'd work on a little something special for him. No lyrics, she had always had problems with lyrics, but Lee could compose, so in her spare moments in the shop, she had started jotting down notes, trying to figure out combinations that would sound good, that she liked. Every so often, she'd have to actually go to the apartment while Tarin was doing a session so she could actually hear what she had come up with, but she could get the basics done sitting in the shop, fine tuning it later.

That's what Lee was working on, keeping an eye on Tarin so he didn't actually see it, when the woman entered the shop. Lee glanced up when she heard the bell, but otherwise didn't do much more than smile in greeting. The redhead had become a regular customer, and Tarin had already gotten up from his chair to lead her into the back.

And though she hadn't done anything other than smile at the woman, Lee couldn't help but notice just how perfectly her make up was applied, how tight her blouse was, and how there should have been at least one more button done up on it.

But when Tarin turned his head and gave her a smile just before disappearing into the back, Lee pushed those tiny worries away and grinned in return. She always hated it when Tarin got all jealous just because some random guy looked at her. She knew that Tarin wouldn't have been able to talk about the two of them getting married the night before with such a happy smile on his face if she had had any reason to be jealous.

That left Lee in the front, free to focus on the music in front of her without having to worry about Tarin wandering over to look. And since he was busy with a session in the back room, Lee took the opportunity to softly hum the most recent bars she had come up with to see how they sounded. Not exactly the same as playing them on the guitar, but it was so much easier than simply looking at blots of ink on a piece of paper.

After about 20 minutes, Lee's throat had become quite dry, though, and she realized that she had already finished her drink before the woman had entered the shop.

Now, normally Lee didn't go into the back when Tarin was in the middle of a session unless she was called, but the problem was she knew that with this particular woman, the sessions always dragged on forever. And, Lee decided, she was not going to pay almost $3 for a simple can of pop at the only store within a block of the shop.

Lee was simply going to sneak into the back room as quietly as she could, slip over to where they had the small kitchenette curtained off, at which point she'd be hidden from view again as she grabbed her drink from the fridge.

At least that had been the plan before Lee had set foot into the back of the shop and saw the redhead actually sitting on Tarin's lap, their lips locked together, and her hands entwined in his hair.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Lee screeched before a single coherent thought had even entered her mind.

The woman was damn persistent, and her hands were in a vice grip in his hair. Mistaking his hands on her waist for encouragement, the woman wrapped herself more firmly around him and Tarin found himself getting more than annoyed. It wasn't that the woman wasn't...womanly and all, but he really wasn't interested and his body wasn't even responding in the cursory physical way he would have expected from such contact.

He would have spoken, but with the increasing one-sided intensity of the "kiss" that was occurring, Tarin figured opening his mouth was a bad idea. Things were starting to get drastic though and the red head was going to find herself on her bum on the floor soon because that was vastly preferable...

before the words could even finish forming in Tarin's mind, a nearly inhuman screech rent the air and gave him the last bit of encouragement he needed to leap to his feet. As he'd feared from the onset of the...assault, the redhead tumbled to the floor at the base of the chair, unfortunately taking with her a decent handful of Tarin's hair.

"That's what I'd like to know!" Tarin said, looking down at the girl on the floor who was looking up at him with a knowing smile. Apparently she still thought she'd made an encouraged move. This was confirmed when she stood and reached for him, a move Tarin barely evaded, "What the hell does it look like?" The young woman said, tossing her hair and glaring in Lee's direction.

"It looks like an absolute misunderstanding..." Tarin said though clenched teeth, then turned to Lee and started to walk towards her, "This isn't what it looks like...."

Famous last words... some internal voice mocked, making Tarin want to bite off his tongue, cross his fingers for success, or both.

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Tarin had leapt to his feet and the redhead was on the floor. Guilty. Of course he felt guilty and was startled to his feet as soon as she had caught him.

And that thought, despite what Tarin said, was only strengthened in Lee's mind when she heard the woman speak...and move closer to Tarin again.

Yet again, even more so when Lee heard the woman's voice asking Lee of all people what it looked like she had walked into. Ignoring Tarin's move toward her for the moment as well as his words, she would deal with him later, Lee advanced on the woman. Reaching her hand out as she flipped her hair, Lee caught a handful, in much the same manner that she had had Tarin's hair just moments earlier. "What it looks like," Lee hissed at the woman as she started walking toward the front of the shop, pulling the redhead along with her. "Is you leaving. And so help me, if I ever see you anywhere around here ever again, you will not be walking away a second time."

By that time, Lee had reached the door to the shop and yanked it open. "Is that a threat?" The redhead asked, a note of confidence and defiance in her voice despite how Lee's hand was locked in the woman's hair, and the fact that she had been dragged through the shop like that. Without bothering to answer, Lee pushed the woman through, feeling a touch of pleasure as she watched her knees scrap as she fell.

"You're damn right it is," Lee replied, even as she was slamming the door shut and turning the lock.

Spinning, Lee rounded on Tarin, her grey eyes burning with anger. And though she had a million things to say, she couldn't figure out how to make any of those thoughts into a coherent, understandable sentence as she stood glaring at the man she loved. At the man whom she had thought loved her just as much.

He was effed...he was so effed...he was seriously effed....Tarin couldn't get any other thoughts to run through his mind as he watched in numb shock what was unfolding before him. Somehow he'd been too caught up in himself, in what he was doing with the shop, in things with Lee to notice how things were progressing with this poor confused girl who had mistaken his simple kindness and good nature for something far more. Something that obviously gave her the confidence to mouth even when Lee had a handful of her hair.

Wincing at the violent scene unfolding in his shop, Tarin tried to build up the courage to say something to Lee as she drug the girl around like a rag doll, but couldn't find the words to say what he wanted without making the situation worse. If he hadn't been terrified about what was going to happen once she got the door shut, Tarin would have been impressed by what Lee was doing. It was the most proactive he'd ever seen her be, and frankly it was dead sexy, but Tarin didn't notice it, he just stood dumbly by as Lee literally threw the redhead out of the shop and in no uncertain terms informed her would a return visit would result in.

Lee turned and Tarin could see the hurt, anger, and accusation in her eyes as she stared at him. Moving forward, very cautious, Tarin held out his hands, palms up. "I know it sounds lame Lee...but that wasn't what you think it was...and I can tell what you're thinking."

Tarin was honestly a little surprised, Lee's anger at the redhead was completely justified, the little hussy had practically assaulted him in his own shop...however, flipping the anger around to him was just simply wrong.

"Take a deep breath and think before you say anything...you know that wasn't what you're thinking it was...."

Lee simply stood there and stared at Tarin as he slowly approached her, his hands out. The closer he got to her, the more her body tensed. He didn't actually think that she'd let him touch her after all that, did he? Tarin knew that for her, any touching was so much more important, so much more intimate than for the average person. How could he possibly think it was alright for him to touch her after that?!

Luckily, for both of them, he stopped an arms length away, not actually touching her. Lee's body remained tensed, though, angry.

Ignoring what Tarin said about her taking a breath, thinking about what she was about to say, Lee opened her mouth. "If it's not what I think, then what the hell was it, Tarin?" Lee demanded, her eyes still hard as she glared at the man in front of her. "Cause I know what I saw in there. That wasn't simply some little 'accident' that wasn't your fault. She was on your ******* lap, Tarin! How could you do that?"

So, maybe pissed was an understatement. Tarin could see the barely contained anger simmering under the surface of Lee's not so calm exterior. Tarin honestly didn't know what to do, Lee was the rational one, she was the one who held it together when he was falling to emotional pieces and unable to handle things. With Lee completely out of control there was nobody to tell Tarin how to deal with the situation and he felt completely out of his element.

Lee spoke finally and Tarin's eyebrows shot to his hairline at what she said, at what she implied, at the accusatory tone in her voice. Lee really thought that he'd been carrying on some sort of tryst while she sat no more than 10 ft away. Anger had obviously robbed his fiance of any kind of reason she may have previously possessed. Tarin knew he hadn't reacted firmly enough or quickly enough to dispel the situation though so he told himself to let her say her piece, then respond accordingly.

Tarin must have looked like the most surprised person on the planet when Lee cursed at him, it was the first time he could honestly remember something like that happening and it made his head spin a little to think that he'd been responsible for this...even if it was in a round about way that really wasn't his fault. He knew one thing though, he had to make her see reason, make her calm down before something horrible happened...well, more horrible than his fiance dragging another woman out of the shop by her hair...

"It was...it was..." Tarin couldn't think of what to say to describe exactly what had happened short of simply admitting that he'd been caught off guard, "I was doing the reading, had my eyes closed...one minute she's across the table from me, the next she's attacking me lick a hoover on a bowling ball...it wasn't my fault Lee..."

She was still fuming, absolutely off her rocker with anger over what she'd seen, and Tarin still didn't know exactly what to do to defuse the situation...the accusations were starting to pull up his defenses though, "I didn't do anything..." he said, voice a bit colder than he'd intended it to be, "She obviously thought that stood some sort of chance and this was the time to make her intentions known...I can't help that..."

Tarin stopped and shook his head, letting this escalate into a screaming match wasn't going to improve things either, so he tried something else. Moving forward the last couple of steps towards Lee, Tarin reached out and laid his hands on her shoulders, "I love you Lee...not some silly tramp off the street...You know you're the only one I want, you've been my whole life the last months...you know that wasn't what you think you saw, no matter how much it looked like it."

Please believe me Lee...please..." Tarin chanted in his head like a litany, hoping beyond hope that it would help.

Tarin looked surprised at what she had said. How the hell could he really be surprised? He'd been there, he knew what was going on. Unless he had been hoping that she had seen less that she actually had.

Things really didn't get any better once Tarin started speaking, mainly because instead of simply speaking, he was stalling, hesitating. Taking more time to actually be able to come up with an excuse that would seem at least halfway feasible.

Lee didn't buy it. If it had actually happened the way Tarin was trying to say it had, why the hell had she been on his lap? Why hadn't he pushed her away? It wasn't like that woman was super strong or anything, so he would have been able to get her away from him if he had wanted to.

But there was more. Tarin knew, knew that she didn't go into the back when he had a customer there if she could at all help it. Today had been the rare exception. That woman had been a frequent customer for at least a month, now, and her sessions with Tarin had always been long. Most definitely longer than the average session.

Before she was able to voice any of these thoughts, before she was really able to do anything else, Tarin had closed the remaining distance between them, put his hands on her shoulders. Lee's eyes widened as her body fully tensed at the touch.

"Don't you dare touch me after all that," Lee hissed, her right hand coming up and slapping Tarin across the face. Backing away a couple steps so that Tarin wasn't able to simply reach out and touch her again without moving, Lee looked up at him. "How many times?" She whispered. Then her eyes widened in shock. That redhead hadn't been the only attractive woman who had recently become a regular customer at the shop. "How many others?"

Things were going from bad to worse and Tarin was desperately trying to figure out how to stop back sliding. Lee seemed to think she was completely justified in the way she was acIting, in the accusations she was throwing when she couldn't have been further from the truth. It bordered on insulting, in fact it was insulting that she would treat him this way.

It got worse.

The second Tarin laid his hands on Lee's shoulders he felt a practical surge of energy leave him. It was alarming on more than one level, in the entire time he'd known Lee Tarin had never experienced her acting this way and he knew that the amount of energy she was taking from him would just wind her up more.

It got worse still.

Tarin didn't see it coming because if anyone had asked him if Lee were capable of legitimate violence he would have told them they were absolutely crazy. In his unprepared state, Lee's hand contacted the side of her face with a crack so loud that somewhere in the Congo apes were looking up from their breakfast to figure out what had happened.

The blow actually staggered him a bit but Tarin refused to believe that Lee would have hit him that hard if she'd have really known what she was doing. Hands gone from her shoulders now, Tarin held one to the side of his face, amazed that the skin was warm to the touch from the blood rushing to the surface. "I guess you think I deserved that..." he said through clenched teeth as he tried to compose himself.

More accusations, more questions, and Tarin was still trying to shake the stars out of his line of vision. Incredulously he stood there, watching Lee ask him how many times he'd done that with the redhead...and how many others there had been. It was good to know she had such faith in him.

"After all what!" Tarin said, wincing at the pain in his face, "I just told you exactly what happened!" Tarin paused for a moment, wanting to reach out again but simply shaking his head as Lee apparently read his mind and stepped back again.

"Nothing like that has ever happened to me before. That would explain the initial lack of defense you witnessed." Tarin said, struggling to keep patience in his voice as he explained things that really shouldn't need explanation at this point.

How many others? For the love of all things holy, he couldn't explain this any more thoroughly. "There weren't any others because there haven't been any to start with...you're being really narrow minded if you cant tell that was completely one-sided."

Tarin hoped Lee would calm down, or at least take what he'd said into consideration, his cheek was throbbing now with an intensity he did not relish and as he ran his other hand through his hair he sighed.

Tarin staggered back slightly, and part of Lee was shocked. She had actually hit him, and hard enough to have actually made him move back, to hold a hand to his cheek where she had contacted. She hadn't even resorted to that sort of thing when Tarin had been merged with a spirit who was trying to kill her.

That surprise and shock was overpowered by the anger she was still feeling at Tarin, though. He kept claiming it had been nothing, but Lee knew what she had seen. It might have been nothing if the woman had still been in her own chair, but she wasn't. She had been sitting on Tarin's lap, and his hands were on her waist. Her hands had been in Tarin's hair, and Lee knew how Tarin liked it whenever she had done that.

"'Lack of initial defence'?" Lee asked sceptically, her eyebrows shooting up as she heard Tarin spout that one off. "Just like at the bar." Lee continued, averting her eyes as for the first time tears sprang up into her eyes, nodding knowingly as she spoke. "You never initiated anything, they always came to you. You just go along with it, you can't not do it.

"That's what it was with me, that night I kissed you, wasn't it?" Lee asked, turning an accusing, though tear filled look, back at Tarin. "No, don't answer that. I don't want to know."

Taking a deep breath, Lee stepped past Tarin and moved over to the coat rack, pulling her jacket down. "You know," she started, her voice now a whisper, as her eyes focused on the movements her hands were making. "From day one, I knew you were going to leave, for one reason or another. I just thought you'd actually leave first before you went to someone else..."

This was all beyond what Tarin could have possibly imagined the argument blooming into. Instead of his calm setting things right, it seemed like they were simply getting worse, it didn't make sense. It didn't make sense at all. His face still throbbed and Lee didn't apologize or even look sorry for being the cause of it. Tarin started to vaguely wonder if he'd accidentally stepped into an alternate universe.

Tarin had never known the amount of thought Lee had put into his bar hopping escapades, but she seemed to have the system down very well. What was the point in pursuing someone who wasn't interested, wasn't an almost guaranteed sure thing? It had never made sense until Lee, and that's why it had always been so easy to hop from woman to woman and city to city. None of them had been worth the effort, or had expected it. Not like Lee, whose next words stun more than her palm connecting with his cheek.

"You know it wasn't like that...whatever I was before changed in that moment and you know it Lee." Tarin said, trying to swallow the sudden lump which had inserted itself between his trachea and esophagus and was threatening to cut off his air supply. How could she possibly think that had been something as simple as she was suggesting? That night in that bar, more than a little buzzed from the binge the two of them had gone on, Tarin had felt a rush of feeling like he hadn't felt, had been too afraid to feel for years. Tarin wanted to say more, but he couldn't find the words through the sting of Lee's accusation.

She was actually going to leave? He was the one who got angry and left during arguments, not the other way around. The role reversal here was as staggering as the blow to the face and the words that Lee kept using against him and Tarin was really starting to reel...her next words didn't help at all...

"You're the one leaving Lee...I didn't do anything...and I'm not going anywhere. Once you've had a chance to calm down and actually think instead of simply hurling unfounded accusations you'll realize how wrong you are." So what if 'unfounded accusations' was probably a bit of an overstatement of the situation, Lee was still overreacting, but in this situation with her this irrational and angry Tarin didn't know if she should leave...

"And there's not someone else, there never has been and there never will be. Just don't go Lee...we've got to talk this out...you're too angry..."

Lee was pulling her jacket over her arms as she heard Tarin's voice once more, telling her that apparently she knew she was wrong, knew that he had changed. But really, had he? Lee had never seen Tarin 'in action' before they had gotten together. And while, even though her anger, Lee knew she had never seen anything like that happen since they had started dating, Lee also knew that Tarin had hooked up that night she hadn't made it to the bar to meet him, just two days before they had stated dating. That didn't seem too much like a change to Lee.

"You think I haven't heard this before?" Lee asked, her back still to Tarin. "'It's not what you think', and 'there's nothing going on'. I believed it once before, believed the lies, and it continued. My powers were too much, too difficult, too much of a limitation. So he had gone somewhere else, to someone else.

"Why the hell do you think I left Toronto?" Lee finished, rounding on Tarin again, her coat fully on by this point. "Never again, I'd decided. And really, what was the chance that I'd even be with anyone again," she continued, tears springing into her eyes once more. "And then there you were, with all your charm and you refused to stop touching me..."

The blows were getting lower and lower and Tarin was getting more and more confused, more and more hurt by the moment. This was the most confusing situation he'd been in and didn't have a clue how to get out of it. The idea that he might not be able to get out of it didn't occur to him, this was him and this was Lee, they were in love. They were going to be together...forever.

In all honesty, Tarin didn't know whether or not Lee had heard it before, if she had it wasn't something that she'd mentioned to him. There were things that he didn't know about her, just like there were things she didn't know about him. Tarin stood where he was, almost afraid to take his hand off of his stinging cheek. Maybe if he kept it there it would ensure that she didn't hit the other one. "Lee, I don't know what's happened to you in the past, but this time it's true. That little tramp practically attacked me! I was pushing her off when you walked in. That you think I'd do something like that right under your nose absolutely disgusts me...." he was getting defensive now, not necessarily a good idea, but there was nothing else for it in reality, he had to defend himself at some point.

There were tears again and oh how Tarin hated it when Lee cried, hated it even more now because he knew where they had come from and why they were forming, and dammit he felt guilty. Felt guilty over something that hadn't even really been his fault.

Apparently she'd left Toronto for a reason like this, "I thought you left because of your parents..." he muttered miserably and sighed. Tarin knew that it was difficult for Lee, that it had been difficult for Lee. For the first several months every inch gained was like a mile and now she was twisting those moments, those beautiful moments like they were all some kind of ploy to trick her into a situation where he could womanzie.

Tarin didn't now what to say, didn't have a clue, and he looked at Lee full on. "I didn't stop touching you because I couldn't stop touching you Lee...I never want to stop touching you. I love you. I don't have another thing to say about it."

Lee was crying. She didn't want Tarin to see her tears, not now, but she couldn't seem to stop them. Tarin's words certainly didn't help, either. He thought that because he wanted to touch her, knowing how important that was to her, what she had seen wouldn't matter? That because he loved her, what had just happened didn't mean anything?

Lee brought her hands together in front of her, sliding the ring off her finger for the first time since Tarin had bought it. "You couldn't stop touching me? Just like you couldn't stop her from kissing you?" Lee asked through her tears as she threw the ring toward Tarin. "Like you can't be held responsible for your actions when you're touching me?

"Are you sure you're not just mistaking lust for love?" Lee asked, taking a needed breath through her anger as she started moving for the door. "I've seen your eyes when you look at me. There doesn't seem to be much there but lust a lot of the time."

By this point, Lee had reached the door, but her hand paused on the latch a moment before she pulled it open. "Go find yourself another plaything, Tarin," she told him without even turning around. "Maybe you'd be happier without so many 'experiments'."

And with that, Lee pulled the door open and swept through, hurrying down the street, tears of pain and anger still flowing from her eyes.