Lee smiled as Tarin responded to her thanks. And smiled wider when he gave her another kiss. There had not been enough of that this morning in Lee's opinion. But she didn't push it. They didn't need a repeat of the previous night.

Grabbing the cutlery she'd pulled out off the counter, Lee turned to follow Tarin out of the kitchen. To the table that was currently the home of their still unfinished puzzle.

"You know, I'll hold you to that," Lee said as she sat down.

After a couple of bites of eggs, Lee looked up at Tarin thoughtfully. "You know, it occurred to me that I've probably had an actual breakfast more since you've moved in than I did in the entire previous decade."

Well, they’d just have to eat around the puzzle. That, or actually finish the silly thing so that they could put it away and be done with it. Oh well, there was still room for plates and that was all that really mattered in the grand scheme of things.

Sitting the plates down on either side of the table, Tarin sat and waited as Lee brought the silverware and took her seat across the table stating that she was going to hold him to his “anytime” statement in the kitchen. To that, Tarin nodded, ”Wouldn’t have offered if I minded.” he said with a contented smile as he started to eat his eggs. They were good.

After a few moments like that, Lee looked up and Tarin followed suit as she pointed out that since he’d moved in she had probably eaten breakfast more than she had in a decade.

Probably because mornings were so hard for her and even when her sister had been living in the apartment nobody had ever thought to offer Lee a bit of energy to get her going in the morning since it was what she literally needed to function.

Tarin knew that Lee’s sister had been more thoughtless than malicious, but Tarin still couldn’t believe it had never occurred to Rachel to help.

Realizing he hadn’t said anything in response to Lee’s statement, Tarin smiled again, “The benefits have been seemingly endless, haven’t they?” he teased, rather than bring up why Lee had generally skipped breakfast and potentially being wrong or dampening the comfortable mood that had sprung up between them.

"Well, good," Lee murmured as she turned toward her food. Though it was true, wasn't it? When had Tarin really offered to do anything that he actually minding doing? Sure, there had been times when he'd been wildly uncomfortable while doing things, such as holding Michael while she'd been babysitting.

Tarin was quiet for longer than Lee expected after her comment about breakfast. When he did finally answer, Lee grinned across the table at him. "One of, if not the best decision you've ever made in my opinion," Lee told him with certainty, still holding Tarin completely responsible for the decision that he was moving in.

Lee took another bite of the eggs, then pointed at them with her fork. "These are good," she said once she had finished the mouthful.

Lee seemed pleased about Tarin’s offer to kind of take over breakfast duties and he was honestly very content with that decision as well. He loved feeling like he was contributing and helping in some way. Maybe he could figure out some other things to make too. They were kind of in a cooking renaissance and there was nothing that said it had to all be related to dinner foods. Were pancakes hard to make? They didn’t seem like they’d be all that difficult. Maybe he could try it out at the shop before debuting it at home so that if things went wrong it wouldn’t upset Lee.

The topic moved to him moving in and again Tarin found himself slightly embarrassed that apparently he’d just decided he’d be moving into Rachel’s room long term instead of the short stay Lee had envisioned. Considering all the things that had happened sense, it was a little easier to swallow that embarrassment, but still…ugh.

”Second best probably…” he said, next to the actual decision to come across the rift. It was still a bit of a surprise to Tarin that he had actually gone through with the idea in the first place. ”Definitely right up there though.” . Agreeing to Rachel’s insistence that he take Lee to the open mic night was another good call, but what had happened that night had probably been inevitable by that point. ”You deciding to just go along with my weirdly forward self-invitation was a good call too.”

They ate for another moment and Lee declared the gags to be good and Tarin had to laugh a little bit, ”When you can only cook like five or six things, you tend to get pretty good at them.”

Tarin thought that that decision to move into her her spare room was the second best decision he had made in his life. Lee could only guess that coming to this side of the rift when he had was the best. Which, to be fair, was a damn good decision as well.

Tarin thought that her deciding to go along with the moving in thing was a good idea too. Lee shrugged. "It was definitely a lot easier than the previous fighting to get you to let me stick around," Lee told him lightly. "Plus, if things had not gone well, I figured that I could always kick you out."

Not that Lee had really expected that things would go badly. If she had expected a bad outcome from Tarin staying in the extra room, Lee wouldn't have suggested it in the first place, long term or short.

And Tarin thought that since he only knew how to cook a few things, that was why he had gotten good at making them. "Well, at least one of us has some actual skill at cooking," Lee said before going back to her eggs.

”You kept talking logic and sense…couldn’t have that.” Tarin said, equally as light. It wasn’t that he was joking about what had happened, Tarin didn’t think he’d ever be able to joke about that. He was joking about how utterly flabbergasted he’d been with Lee and how to handle her utter insistence that he let her keep an eye on him around a clock those first few days.

Plus, she was confident that she could have easily kicked him out if necessary. Tarin was confident that Lee was absolutely right about that and if she had so desired, he’d have been out on his ass with his head spinning. So he just grinned.

When Lee suggested that Tarin actually had some skill at cooking, he laughed, ”Skill is really stretching it.” Tarin said with a shake of his head, ”I’ve just messed it up enough times that I finally figured out how to do it right. I’m glad you like them though.”

Taking another couple of bites, Tarin looked up and chuckled a little, ”I also make a mean box of macaroni and cheese, spaghetti with jarred sauce, grilled cheese, and taco meat.” there were a couple of other things that he’d made successfully in the past, but the chicken Alfredo he’d made with Lee had been the most ambitious meal Tarin had ever made.

Lee laughed softly when Tarin pointed out that he couldn't have her making sense and being logical with her reasons for wanting to stick around him those first days.

"That's what the problem was?" Lee asked jokingly, shaking her head. "And here I had been thinking I was just that bad of company that you couldn't wait to be rid of me."

As Tarin listed off the things he had actually learned how to make, apparently by messing up while cooking many times, Lee nodded. Those all seemed like things that might not be bad to try making, especially if Tarin already knew how.

That had to make the whole process easier, and less nerve wracking, right?

But that would be for after they'd gotten Kevin to the mansion. If they were going to try one more actual home cooked meal, they were going to do it how they had planned the previous night.

"When Kevin was about 8, all he wanted to eat was grilled cheese for about 6 months straight. That's about the only thing I've actually managed to get right, and I had to buy one of those grill things with a timer."

Lee suggested that she’d thought the reason Tarin had wanted her gone was because she was bad company and it was his turn to roll his eyes.

They were joking and teasing, and they’d been over this as recently as the night before. ”The problem was pretty much the exact opposite. Your company was too good.”. Lee had kept on talking to him, and grounding him, and making sure he didn’t get too deeply into his own head. That had absolutely been her objective, and she’d been wildly successful.

Lee shared a story then of a time that Kevin had decided to only eat grilled cheese for a significant amount of time.

Through requirement, Lee had learned to make grilled cheese…with the help of a little grill thing.

“Those things do make great grilled cheese. I had one in a couple apartments I lived in that didn’t have stovetops. Ever had a canned spaghetti sandwich?”

Tarin actually rolled his eyes when she joked that he'd thought she was that bad of company that weekend. Though, Lee was sure she certainly would have been considered bad company by normal standards. Such as packing a bag of stuff for him from his closet while he sat on the floor.

"I was too good of company?" Lee asked as she grinned across the table at Tarin. "I don't think anyone has said that about me before."

Though that might not be completely true, but given the kind of situation, Lee didn't think that she would have ever been described as anything other than stubborn and relentless.

"A canned spaghetti sandwich?" Lee questioned, her nose wrinkled at the thought. "I can happily say that I haven't had one of those before. And while the grill should still be buried…somewhere in the kitchen, I'm not going to dig it out if that's what you're going to make."

Lee seemed skeptical that anyone would say that her company was too good and Tarin absolutely had to disagree. Lee was grinning when she said it though, so maybe she wasn’t entirely serious.

Okay…maybe if he thought about it she had done a few things that had been absolutely wild, but it wasn’t like the situation hadn’t been absolutely wild to begin with and he’d been incredibly difficult to deal with on top of it all. It was only fair that Lee had responded in kind. Tarin shook his head and laughed a little, ”I kept ending up here and I’d realize that I had no idea how it had happened. I would leave, fully expecting to not come back, and then all of a sudden I’d be back here.”

Tarin had to tease a bit here, ”For all your insistence that the whole thing was my idea, you sure seemed keen on keeping me around.” They both knew why that had really been, but not a single bit of this conversation had been serious, so there was no reason to start now.

At the mention of the spaghetti sandwich, Lee seemed properly horrified and Tarin held up a finger and shook his head, ”Hear me out…” he said, smiling and laughing a bit at how Lee was reacting.

”Butter and garlic salt on the bread, heat the spaghetti up ahead of time, pull apart some string cheese and put it on the bread before the spaghetti. It’s just like eating garlic bread and spaghetti with cheese on top.” It had actually been way better than it had any right to be.

“Pretty much lived on it for a while. Switch out the garlic butter for maple syrup and butter and you can make a pretty awesome breakfast sandwich.” Tarin hadn’t included these in the list of meals he could make because they really weren’t meals, but still…

Lee laughed slightly when Tarin pointed out that somehow, every time he thought that he had left the apartment that first weekend thinking he'd never be back, somehow she had gotten him back there.

"Like I've said, getting you back here and keeping you here took a lot of work," Lee reminded Tarin. "If offering to walk with you back to the shop and then walking home by myself had actually worked and you let me do that, I would have been out of ideas for how to keep you here that night."

Apparently, at least according to Tarin, that canned spaghetti sandwich wasn't as bad as it sounded. If you did it right.

And the way that he described making it…Lee supposed that it did make sense that it wouldn't be so bad. That really was just a different way of making garlic bread, and putting the spaghetti on it would just be eating all of it in a single bite rather than separately.

"Alright, maybe it wouldn't be completely disgusting," Lee allowed. "I'm still not sure how I feel about it, though."

The details were fuzzy, and it was kind of funny as Lee explained how she’d managed to get him to stay at the apartment that night. ”Knowing what I know now…” he said, letting the sentence dangle a bit. Knowing what he knew now, Tarin wouldn’t have had a single problem letting Lee walk home by herself because she was more than capable of doing so with no problem.

Tarin had a feeling that Lee would have figured something out though. When Lee decided she wanted something to happen, she rarely let up until she managed what she wanted.

Still, it was all a moot point because Tarin had been convinced and he had stayed and the rest had ended up part of their shared history.

And Tarin had made significant progress in convincing Lee that a spaghetti sandwich wasn’t terrible. She wasn’t sure how to feel about it, but Lee was no longer making faces. ”Maybe I’ll treat you sometime.” he said, ”Or instead of in the can I can substitute the stuff made with the jar sauce.” The canned spaghetti could get a bit tinny from time to time.

The eggs and toast were quickly disappearing now and it really had been a good breakfast. Checking his watch, Tarin noted that while time was moving faster than it had the night before, there was still quite a while before he needed to leave.

Lee had been lucky that Tarin hadn't known back then what he knew now about her powers. That, combined with his belief that if she said she could do or handle something, she could, would have caused her plan to fail because Tarin would have been completely fine with her walking home from the shop alone at that time of night.

If he had known then, she wouldn't have been there when he woke up from that first nightmare. And honestly, with how he had been earlier that weekend, that thought still kind of scared Lee because she didn't' know how he would have reacted or dealt with the nightmare on his own.

"Well, I suppose we're lucky you hadn't learned that lesson yet," Lee replied. Though, once Tarin had learned more about her and her powers, he had quickly become one of the few people who had ever completely had faith she knew what she was capable of.

As Tarin went on, Lee raised an eyebrow at him. "I'm not sure that a spaghetti sandwich would be considered a treat," Lee told him. "But maybe you'll be able to convince me to try it."

Were they lucky he hadn’t learned that lesson yet? Lee used the word we very freely considering the fact that Tarin was the lucky one there. Things had been better by that point, but the nightmare had been an absolute kick in the teeth and Tarin still didn’t know what he would have done if Lee hadn’t been there when he’d woken up.

”Wish I’d have thought to grab pants to sleep in.” he said,trying to remember if they’d ever talked about this before and drawing a total blank. He hadn’t had anything that night. They’d ran the next morning in the park…

Lee was open to giving Tarin a chance on the spaghetti sandwich, “You gave the Mets a chance and look how that’s panned out.” he said, ”Who knows, maybe the spaghetti sandwich will be the next great discovery.” Tarin tilted his head slightly as he sat there, ”Surely people on this side have thought of a spaghetti sandwich…” This couldn’t be another thing that he’d brought with him…could it?

"Yeah…that was more than a little awkward once I realized that," Lee said.

Even though she had technically seen more of Tarin that first night at the shop, because of the circumstances it didn't even register for Lee the same way. Similarly to how the fact that he had been shirtless when she'd first entered the bedroom hadn't registered because at the moment it hadn't been important. Helping Tarin after he'd just woken up from that nightmare had been.

"Though, if you hadn't taken your backpack back to the shop and spent the whole day trying to get rid of me," Lee pointed out lightly. "You would have had pants to sleep in. "And a shirt. And clothing for the next day."

Tarin was now trying to compare her giving the Mets a shot and ending up liking baseball to this spaghetti sandwich thing. "And I'm sure that somebody has thought of it before. Just it definitely wasn't me."