Tarin didn't say anything about her patience levels. But it definitely looked like he had some thoughts about it.

Still, that wasn't very important as they sat there looking at each other, lips practically touching.

Tarin agreed that staying lost was an excellent idea, and Lee grinned as she felt his lips pressing against hers again. If this was how they were going to be lost, it was an excellent idea.

Turning slightly on the couch, not breaking the kiss, Lee leaned into Tarin. Most definitely a good idea. There had not been nearly enough of this over the course of the day.

Lee lifted a hand, it coming to rest on the back of Tarin's neck as she slowly deepened the kiss.

This was far more interesting than a puzzle. Far more enjoyable than a show.

And definitely distracting from previous topics of conversation.

Well. Lee had said that she wanted to be distracted and sort of turn her brain off. From previous experience Tarin knew that this was a perfect way to do exactly that.

Lee turned more into him and Tarin took the opportunity to slip his arm around her back and pull her just a little closer as her hand came to rest on the back of his neck.

Tarin was sure that the show was still going in the background, but it only took a few moments for him to stop thinking about that at all and his focus to completely shift to Lee. As soon as they started kissing like this it was like the only thing he could ever think about was her, how she felt against him, the way her hand felt on the back of his neck

Perfectly content to stay like this until the start of the next episode or the turn of the next century, Tarin leaned back into the kiss, glad he’d finally asked about the stupid puzzles.

As she turned, Lee felt Tarin's arm wrap behind her back, pulling her closer. Good. Closer was very good.

At the moment, Lee had completely forgotten about the earlier, difficult conversations. It was a little hard to think about those things when Tarin's arm was around her, his hand on her back. His lips on hers as he held her close.

Wrapping her free arm around Tarin, Lee's hand on his neck slowly lifted, her fingers slipping into his hair.

But they were in the living room. Kevin was home. And if they were to continue like this…well, Lee knew that they would forget where they were, and this was not the time or place for that.

Slowly, reluctantly, Lee began pulling back, breaking the kiss. But once again, she didn't move far; her lips were still almost touching Tarin's, her fingers still in his hair. "We should probably slow down…" she whispered.

Mission accomplished. Tarin was pretty sure that neither he nor Lee were thinking about anything that had to do with the rest of the day anymore. At least, he would have been pretty sure if Lee’s hand hadn't slipped up into his hair.

Tarin’s brain pretty much shut down any time Lee did that and this was no exception. Somewhere swirling around in there was the fact that they were in the living room, it had been a rough day for Lee and she’d had a long talk with Kevin about a bunch of difficult things.

Lee began to pull back and at first Tarin followed her because there was a whole lot more kissing to be done, but Lee broke the kiss and Tarin stopped following her, blinking his eyes open as Lee whispered that they should probably slow down.

Yeah…common area. Getting too wrapped up in each other had already gotten them in trouble once and Kevin was home.

Leaning his forehead against Lee’s for just a moment, Tarin sighed and nodded before giving her one more quick kiss and starting to lean back. “Right as always…but you’re gonna have to move your hand.”

As she was trying to pull back from the kiss, Tarin was following her. Continuing the kiss.

It was very tempting to just dive back in, let Tarin continue the kiss. But Kevin was home. Kevin was awake. Kevin could walk out of his room and see them at any moment.

Even though she had been the one to say that they needed to slow down, to remind them that they were in a common area and that they couldn't get completely lost, there was a part of Lee that was a little disappointed when Tarin stopped following her and the kiss broke.

Lee sighed, her eyes closing as Tarin leaned his forehead against hers. Then he said she'd have to move her hand if they were actually going to slow down.

Immediately, Lee started moving the hand that she had wrapped around behind him. But as Tarin was moving to lean against the couch, Lee realized that she still had a hand behind his head. In his hair.

"Oh. Right," Lee said, letting go and dropping her hand to her lap as a soft blush covered her face again. "That might help, wouldn't it?"

Well. Tarin thought. Moving that hand was helpful too. He couldn’t very well lean back with Lee’s arm around him…but her hand in his hair was probably slightly more pressing if they were going to stop being face to face any time soon.

Lee seemed to realize this fact eventually and Tarin laughed as she finally released his hair and dropped her hand into her lap.

Free to move about the couch, Tarin leaned back, removing his own arm from where he’d wrapped it around Lee to pull her closer and sighed another little sigh.

Still. Later.

Blinking a few more times and running a hand through his hair, then smoothing it back down, Tarin looked back at the TV. A new episode was starting, but they definitely hadn’t paid enough attention to see who had actually gone home.

“Wanna keep going with this or see if there’s something more engaging somewhere else? Turning brains off didn't seem to benefit either of us much…but this is good.”

Once she had removed her hand from Tarin's hair, he leaned back with a sigh of his own.

Yeah. It was a very good idea to stop all of that before they went too far while sitting in the living room.

It took Lee slightly longer than Tarin to get comfortable sitting on the couch facing the TV again, but it appeared that they had missed the entire rest of the episode that had been on.

"I don't know, Tarin," Lee said, giving just a quick glance over at him before turning back to the screen. "I think it was quite a good benefit for both of us. Just at the wrong time and place."

That didn't answer Tarin's question about whether they should continue watching this show or not. Lee watched the TV for another couple of moments. It certainly hadn't been riveting enough to keep their attention on it rather than each other. But Tarin was right, it was good.

"Lets try another episode," she ended up saying. Then smiled over at Tarin. "But if we still can't behave, then maybe we should find something else."

Lee apparently disagreed with Tarin’s comment that the activities of the last few minutes(?) hadn’t been beneficial. In fact, Lee seemed to think that it had all been quite beneficial to both of them.

Tarin didn’t disagree, and Lee had been absolutely right to talk some sense into them, but boy it was hard to focus on the TV now. Where was all of that mental control he was generally so proud of?

Nowhere to be found, and boy Tarin thought it would be silly to sit there and do breathing exercises or something similar. He just needed a minute, that was all. Honestly a few kisses and he was falling all to pieces.

Lee thought that continuing to watch the show was fine and Tarin honestly didn’t think that was going to be any better or any worse at this point than anything else and he turned his head to smile at her and nod as benignly as possible.

“Another episode it is.” he said, then laughed a little, “I can go sit back in the desk chair….or over at the table if we’re worried about our ability to conduct ourselves as reasonable adults for a couple of hours.”

Ugh. Hours.

“Maybe we should do a puzzle…”

Tarin offered to go sit in the desk chair again. Or at the table. And, while that would make it a lot easier for the two of them to keep their hands (and lips) to themselves, it sounded excessive.

They shouldn't need to put that much space between them simply to stop themselves from doing something Kevin would call gross in the middle of the living room.

A couple of hours…that was still quite a while before they could reasonably 'go to bed'. Still quite a while that they had to behave themselves while they were in the living room.

Lee laughed when Tarin commented about actually doing one of the puzzles. "That might be a smart idea, actually," Lee said with a slight shake of her head. It seemed rather excessive that they needed to resort to something like that, or one of them sitting somewhere else. But at the same time, Lee wasn't sure they would be able to keep things appropriate for if Kevin emerged from his room otherwise.

"Is it bad that we need to do that?" she asked Tarin.

Lee actually seemed to be considering Tarin’s half-joked idea that he go and sit somewhere else. It was probably the most sensible way to ensure that everything stayed completely appropriate.

Was it completely necessary though? Tarin looked down at Lee for a moment and sighed a little, maybe it was.

At least he wasn’t alone, Tarin decided when Lee agreed that maybe they should do a puzzle.

Was it bad though?

Tarin thought about that for a moment. Considering the fact that this was the longest actual relationship he’d ever had, Tarin figured Lee would have a better idea regarding the answer to that question than he did. Still…

“How could it possibly be bad?” he said, a slow grin spreading across his features. “Inconvenient at times…absolutely.” like right now.

“Frustrating? Sure.” Again like right now.

“But bad? Never bad.”

Tarin sat and thought for a moment or two after she had asked her question. And asked a question of his own.

His question didn't really need an answer. But it, and the grin spreading across Tarin's face, made Lee smile back at him.

It could be inconvenient? Well, yeah. Forgetting where they were and making out in a crowded, public place, or in the living room when your teenaged son walks in, were definitely inconvenient situations.

And frustrating. It sure was frustrating considering just about all Lee wanted to do at that moment was to lean in and kiss those smiling lips again.

Lee's smile widened more when Tarin told her that what was trying to happen between them that evening would never be bad.

Lee thought she had stopped herself a few moments earlier from leaning in for a kiss despite how much she wanted to. But, when she suddenly realized that Tarin's eyes looked much closer…

Standing up suddenly, Lee took a deep breath. "I'll go find one of those puzzles," she said.

The way that Lee was smiling at Tarin was not helping matters. At least she seemed to like what he said though. Tarin didn’t know what he would have done if she’d have actually thought that all of this between them was actually bad…

Wasn’t this how things were supposed to be? When he’d ever thought about these sorts of things, not that it had happened often, Tarin had always figured it would be like this. The alternation between casual and comfortable and anything but casual or comfortable. Only needing something as casual as look or touch to shift between the two…. It made sense when the feelings ran so deep and so strong. Maybe he was being silly again or his brain was muddling up the thoughts.

They were supposed to be behaving themselves, though…and if that was the case, why was Lee leaning closer? Tarin didn’t move. If they started kissing again, who knew what was going to happen and it wasn’t going to be his fault.

Lee seemed to realize what was happening though, and suddenly she was standing up. To find a puzzle.

Tarin couldn’t help it, he laughed and scrubbed his hand over his face as he watched Lee walk away to find said puzzle. How long had it been since he’d actually done a puzzle anyway?

“You always have the best ideas…”

After taking the deep breath to center herself, relax, whatever it was she needed to do so she didn't just turn around and start kissing Tarin again, Lee started walking toward the hall closet.

As Tarin laughed behind her. "And how many times did I need to tell you that before you believed it?" Lee asked teasingly over her shoulder as she opened the closet.

Leaning over and into the closet, Lee started looking through and shifting boxes as she looked for where the puzzles had been stored away. They couldn't be too buried, Lee was sure. She hadn't packed them away away in case Kevin had randomly decided he wanted to do them again. Though she had done that a couple of years earlier.

"Do you have a preference for which one?" Lee called over to Tarin. "Or should I surprise you?"

Just then, Lee opened the box that the puzzles had been packed into. Waiting for Tarin's response, she grabbed the puzzle box and made her way over to the table.

Had Tarin ever not believed that Lee had the best ideas? Thinking back as Lee started to dig through the closet, he supposed those first few ideas he’d pushed back pretty hard against a lot of Lee’s ideas.

If it hadn’t all been so incredibly screwed up, Tarin thought it might have been a little bit funny at times. The sheer panic he had felt when he’d had that first nightmare and woken up to Lee there to provide comfort and support.

Despite his lack of proper attire.

It all seemed so long ago now, even if in the grand scheme of things it hadn’t been long at all.

Besides that though, ”When did I ever dislike any of your ideas.” he asked over his shoulder as Lee continued to dig.

As for preferences, Tarin could not have cared less what puzzle they did as long as it would be a distraction…and take a while.

Lee apparently found what she was looking for because she rose and approached the table with a box in hand. Standing up and making his way over there, Tarin peered into said box.

”What are our options.”

Well, there had been a few ideas that Tarin hadn't liked. Like her going with him back to the shop the day after the merge. And her insistence that night, after the Empire State Building, that he stay at the apartment. Or, when he refused, her plan to walk to the shop with him, and then walk home, alone, at night in New York.

But Tarin had been going through the aftermath of the merge. Plus, they didn't really know each other at that point.

Since then…Lee had trouble coming up with anything. Well, nothing other than his dislike of the sparring match with Michael, but that had more to do with how sore and bruised she was after than with the sparring itself.

"That's a fair point," Lee conceded. But it had taken a while for him to realize that any idea she gave was probably a good idea before doing it.

Setting the box down, Lee looked up at Tarin. "There's a couple of some kids cartoons, but those are smaller puzzles," Lee told him. "A bunch of superheroes, and a few Space Battles puzzles."