He did know that you either figured things out on your own or it didn’t get done. That had pretty much been the story of his entire life. Tarin was starting to realize, though, that maybe it wasn’t the best way to do things.

They were approaching the building now and Tarin laughed when Lee responded to his quip about why she kept him around. Then she stuck her tongue out at him and took off. Lee wasn’t an overly serious person in Tarin’s experience, but this level of tomfoolery was new and he took off to follow her into the building, looking around the lobby to find her heading for the stairs.

It was sweet of her to avoid the elevator for him, it was still giving him more problems than he wanted to admit, so he followed.

”Don’t I get any credit for when things go right?” he called after her as they headed for that stairwell.

Once Lee was about ten feet into the building, she was far enough from the crowd on the sidewalk to know without looking that Tarin was following her, and she grinned as she made her way to the stairwell. It didn’t matter that she always took the elevator when she was alone, or that they were still semi-regularly taking it when they were together. Lee could tell just about every time that Tarin was still having difficulties with it.

And most of the times she didn’t notice that, she wasn’t noticing the elevator itself so much either.

But after that day with her inadvertently siphoning from Tarin through Tony while they were sparring, Lee wasn’t going to make him choose between taking the elevator with her or taking the stairs alone.

”Don’t I get any credit for when things go right?”

Lee glanced over her shoulder and through the door that led to the stairs back toward Tarin. And shrugged. ”I guess I can admit that things went right because of your being roommates idea,” she said before letting the door close behind her as she made her way up the stairs.

”I guess I can admit that thing went right because of your being roommates idea.”

The door shut on those words and Tarin just stared at it for a few moments.

” My…” he said, then pushed the door open to follow Lee up the stairs, ”My idea?” he said, working to catch up as they climbed. ”You wouldn’t let me leave.” he said, ”You ordered furniture for the other room that I didn’t even know about.”

He was immensely grateful for all of those things and would be for literally the rest of his life, but Tarin in on the game now…a bit oblivious to how utterly outrageous it would have been to joke about that time even a few weeks ago. Now though.…

”It was definitely your idea.”

”That night I did everything I could to not let you leave,” Lee said over her shoulder as she turned to go up the next flight of stairs. ”And yes, I ordered furniture. That I had been planning on getting for a year. I had just procrastinated on that for months.”

“My idea,” she continued, her tone sounding almost off hand. ”Was that you’d stay temporarily, probably only a week or two at most, because why the hell would you want to move in with me?”

Having reached another landing, Lee turned and smirked at him. ”But then you had the idea of being actual roommates. And I am so glad that you did,” Only with that last sentence did her voice grow sincere, because she was glad that he’d done that.

The details were fuzzy because there had been a lot going on at the time, but as Lee continued up the stairs and Tarin followed her, he ran through all of the memories in his head of those first few days.

Lee had been utterly insistent that he stay. She’d offered the empty room at the end of the hall…but had apparently only intended it for a couple of weeks .

Tarin misjudged a step and tripped a little, jogging up a couple of stairs to regain his balance and bringing himself eye to eye with Lee as she finished speaking. That was kind of novel, but he was flushing too hard to really notice.

”Well that’s embarrassing.” he managed to say, ”But we can just add it to the long list, I guess.”

”And besides the obvious I wanted to stay because staying in the shop sucks.”

Lee's smirk faltered when she saw Tarin stumble on the stairs, but he caught himself and before she knew it he was standing eye level with her.

”It really does kinda suck living there,” she said. Well, she hadn't actually lived in the shop herself, and the thought of actually sleeping that close to someone at that time was terrifying, but Lee had spent enough time in the back of the shop to know it sucked to live there.

”Why do you think I used that reason when Rachel and Robert found out that you were living here?”

Lee lifted her hands to rest on Tarin's shoulders before leaning forward to kiss him softly. ”But don't be embarrassed, it was a great idea, wasn't it? But I was thinking only a couple weeks at most because I had thought that'd be the longest you'd put up with me trying to help you…”

Tarin just nodded when Lee agreed that living in the shop sucked. It was an older place and it had all of the issues that old places in New York had. It was also small, and kind of dark, and while Tarin hadn’t really had problems with tight spaces again until recently, sometimes it just felt a little tight in there since there weren’t very many windows.

Lee explained that she’d used that exact point as part of her explanation to Robert and Rachel and Tarin shook his head slowly, ”The fact that both of them were so wildly opposed at first should have really told me something.” Rachel, at least, had come around pretty quickly to the idea…and it had been a good distraction from what had actually happened.

Lee’s hands were on his shoulders now and when she kissed him Tarin smiled a bit. It had ultimately been a good idea, but it was still a little embarrassing now that Tarin knew that he’d made a somewhat wild assumption.

He knew they were teasing and playing right now, but whenever this came up he couldn’t help but think just how lucky he was that Lee had been paying attention and it still made him shudder a bit.

”I desperatelywanted you to leave…” he said, reaching out to wrap his arms around Lee’s waist and lay his head on her shoulder for a moment. ”I’m so glad you’re so stubborn. You might have been the only person in the world I would have listened to.” he’d said it countless times by now, but it didn’t hurt for her to hear it again.

He pulled back then and tried to grin, ”Then I figured it was easier to just stay close so you didn’t have to follow me around all the time.”

”To be fair, with how they reacted, I was a single woman in New York City who had welcomed a man who she’d known really only for days into her home,” Lee allowed. ”Though, I’d say we definitely knew each other much better than anyone else would have by the time Rachel burst in.”

Lee couldn’t stop the smile when she felt Tarin’s arms wrapping around her waist as they stood there. ”Really?” Lee asked in mock surprise when Tarin revealed that he had wanted her to leave. ”You know, never in a million years would I have guessed that.”

Then Tarin leaned back and Lee laughed. ” You know, that really did make my life a lot easier,” she said playfully. ”As did the fact that you were kind enough to wait till Kevin was off to school before going for a run. Meant I didn’t have to track you down.”

Lee did make a fair point, but they both knew it had been more than that.

She was also right that they’d gotten to know each other very well very quickly. It had been out of necessity, but that trust had somehow sprung up almost immediately. It would have been strange if there hadn’t been so many other, stranger things about them.

Lee was teasing him about having wanted her to leave and Tarin just smiled and shook his head. ”Was it the thirty or forty times I said, ‘You should leave’ or something else?”

Lee pointed out that it had been nice for him to wait until Kevin was gone to take a run that first morning they’d run together and Tarin laughed again, ”I’ll bet you would have too.” he said, ”I kept telling you I was fine though. Who was fussing then?”

They were still in the stairwell and as he spoke, Tarin started to climb again.

Lee laughed. ”That may have had a little something to do with it,” she admitted. ”Or maybe how shocked and almost offended you looked when I said I'd put our coffee in travel mugs. But who really knows?”

At least he laughed about the tracking down comment. But as he brought up her fussing over him after the merge, Lee looked a little sheepish, grabbing Tarin's hand as he started up the stairs again. ”Yeah…well, I thought I needed to…” Lee finished far less confidently.

As they continued to climb the stairs and talk, Tarin just shook his head. Those first days had been so surreal. ”I legitimately considered climbing down the fire escape.” he admitted, knowing Lee would get a kick out of that.

Lee took his hand and said that she’d thought she needed to fuss and he thought about it for a moment as they made it to the last flight.

”It’s hard to tell.” Tarin admitted, grabbing the door and pulling it open for Lee, ”I really did think I was fine, and I was fine most of the time.”

The problem hadn’t been the times he was fine. The problem had been when he couldn’t get a handle on everything that had been happening.

”Whether or not I appreciated it at the time, I do now though.”

Lee looked at Tarin incredulously when he said that he’d considered going down the fire escape the first morning at her apartment. ”That would have definitely been a surprising morning to walk in and have you not be there,” she said, shaking her head. ”Good thing I would know where to look for you.”

When Tarin said that he appreciated now what she had done for him, Lee smiled up at him as she walked through the door into the hallway. ”Though it still seems weird just how fine you were,” Lee said softly. ”I don’t think I was that fine after it… and I definitely wasn’t that fine after others…”

”I was desperate, but I decided that was the coward’s way out.” Tarin said when Lee mentioned how strange it would have been for him to climb out the window. She was right.

God, and she’d have tracked him down too.

The next thing Lee said made Tarin frown. It was weird how fine he had been? He really hadn’t been fine through the whole thing, he’d just managed to compartmentalize the bad stuff away enough to get a handle on himself. Truth be told, if he thought about it too much even now it made him sick to his stomach, better to just not think of anything before Lee had gotten there. There was no reason, the time to do anything about it had long passed.

They were at the door now and Tarin got the lock undone and pushed it open again for Lee to go inside.

”Why was it weird?” he asked, ”Once I could actually think straight there wasn’t really anything else to do…” Besides make sure that nothing like that could ever happen again.

”I’m sorry I wasn’t more helpful…”

Lee looked at Tarin in slight confusion as she walked into the apartment. ”No, there wasn’t much to do after,” she said slowly. ”But it’s a lot to deal with, to process. Even just simply what happened in the shop.”

Lee shook her head as she rubbed the back of her neck, thinking back more than 15 years. ”Hell, even the spirit that tried to take him out a window rather than hurt me as I was trying to siphon from it…Even that time it took him a week or two to get back to normal after. And that night was far harder on me considering that was the first time I met Rupert and it was during the Registration Act.”

It was a lot to process. He could think about what had happened in the shop. He had thought about what had happened in the shop, over and over again. He’d done so many things wrong and Lee had gotten hurt.

Tarin scowled at the thought as he shut the door and turned, ”I hate what happened in the shop.” he said, voice quiet but intense. ”It’ll never happen again.” he added with finality.

He also hated the way that Lee spoke with such familiarity about merges and how hard they’d been on her.

It had taken the other Tarin weeks to get back to normal?

”What do you mean a week or two?” he said, still frowning. God, she’d had to deal with uncontrolled powers during the registration plot, and the crazy cop?

”And I can imagine how hard that was for you, it must have been terrifying.”