Tarin looked down thoughtfully at Lee as she shook her head. It made him a little sad that something like cooking evoked so many anxious feelings in Lee that she simply couldn’t wrap her head around people doing it for fun.

”That’s okay.” he said, even though she hadn’t said anything. It really didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things if Lee enjoyed cooking. Tarin had no grand designs on learning himself beyond the basics.

“We can always just watch other people cook.” he said with a smile.

Lee did, at least understand how risk could be worth the reward and Tarin couldn’t help but remember the…conversation they’d had a few days after the building collapse. She’d said something like that then.

“I wish you didn’t, but I’m also glad you’re brave enough to find out.” he said softly, then turned back to the TV to watch.

Lee hadn't spoken, she had simply shaken her head a bit. Yet, Tarin answered as though she had spoken her thoughts out loud.

Turning to look up at him, Lee saw Tarin smiling down at her. "I suppose we could just do that," Lee said after a moment, giving Tarin a small smile in return. "This show is better than I was expecting it to be."

Lee was just starting to turn back to the TV when she heard Tarin speak again, and she turned a slightly confused look on him.

"Brave?" she questioned. Lee knew that she had done many things over the years where she'd needed to be brave. Or done things even though she was terrified. But Lee couldn't think of anything that she had done recently that could be considered brave, unless Tarin was referring to her actually answering Kevin's questions earlier.

Lee agreed that they could just watch other people cook and Tarin nodded. ”It’s very cozy.” Tarin said as the contestants started removing their pies from the oven and the time for the challenge started to wind down.

Confused was a good word for the next look Lee turned on Tarin though and he found himself shrugging again as she questioned why he thought she was brave. This was going to be one of those things where he thought something was obvious and Lee didn’t get it, he could already tell.

”To find out…” he said, ”You said that you could see people thinking that the risk was worth the reward. I think it’s brave to find out…that’s all.”

Hopefully it made sense. It frustrated Tarin sometimes that he was so bad at voicing the thoughts and feelings that ran through his mind. It was probably because he’d spent so long working so hard to do anything but acknowledge things like that, let alone talk about them. Tarin wanted to talk about them now though and the words didn’t always come out in a way that made sense.

”Does that make sense?”

At first, Tarin just shrugged when she questioned him calling her brave. But he did then continue, explaining why he thought that she was brave.

And that did make sense, but also it didn't. Not in this context.

"There are definitely things that are worth taking the risk for," Lee agreed, still a little confused about what Tarin was talking about. There had been a number of things in her life that Lee had very consciously decided that the risk was worth the possible reward.

"But there's nothing brave about cooking, Tarin," Lee continued, a slight crease having formed between her brows. Even though she was anxious about cooking, that didn't make it a brave thing for her to do.

"Unless I've completely missed a change of subject?"

Lee was quiet for a few moments and then she started talking and Tarin couldn’t help but chuckle a bit and shake his head.

He’d been getting all sorts of existential and Lee had been talking about cooking still.

“Don’t worry about it.” Tarin said, still amused, “I’m a little in my head and seeing metaphors everywhere.”


Tarin was quiet for a few moments then, watching the judges judge the contestants' food. They were tough but fair and gave actionable criticisms. What was it with this show? Tarin’s mind kept going back to what Lee had said though, “But, it is kind of brave to cook when it’s been a source of a bunch of anxiety in the past.” He shrugged.

“You know, we don’t have to cook.”

Oh good, Tarin wasn't trying to call her brave for cooking. That was good. No matter how much she might be giving in to him trying to get her to admit how incredible she was, Lee wasn't going to agree with that.

"Oh, well I know you do that. Frequently," Lee replied. "I just wasn't expecting such a sudden topic change."

Yet, that is what Tarin went on to do a couple minutes later: tell her that she was actually a little brave for being willing to cook.

Lee shook her head slightly. "It's still not brave," she said before he reminded her that they didn't have to cook.

Of course they didn't have to. Tarin had left it up to her what they would make next, and in the entire time since they had made the alfredo, he hadn't pushed her or really questioned her about it at all.

"I know," Lee replied quietly. "And I'll probably be just as anxious as last time. But it really wasn't all that bad."

The topic change hadn’t felt all that sudden to Tarin, but then again there’d been a whole line of thinking going on in his head that Lee hadn’t been privy to. That he had commented on.

“Sorry…” he said, taking a bit of a breath, “I said the thing about risk and reward and you said you got that, and it made me think about other times when you’ve said that, and then I commented on it without explaining and you got confused…” Well that had been a bit of a ramble…but maybe it would help Lee understand how he jumped around sometimes.

What that didn’t help was the fact that Lee seemed less than happy that he had said that it was brave to try and cook even when it caused Lee so much anxiety. She insisted it wasn’t actually brave and Tarin sighed a bit, “Okay.”

At least Lee knew that they didn’t need to try to cook stuff if she didn’t want to. She did think she’d probably be just as anxious as she’d been the last time though…even if it hadn’t been all that bad.

“Well good.” he said, ”Not the anxious part…”

Tarin winced a bit, ”I’m going to stop talking now.”

Tarin had continued to think about things and then spoke without telling her what he had been thinking. That…

Lee had done that so many times herself, normally when she had been awake at night and then continued a conversation or topic the next morning miles from where it had been left the previous night.

"Don't worry about it," Lee said. "If I didn't have everything else running through myhead, I may have kept up."

Though, apparently Tarin didn't like the fact that she didn't think her cooking was brave based on the sigh. Yet he didn't try to argue it further, so Lee let it stay there. Because cooking in your own apartment wasn't brave, no matter how horrible you were at it.

"I’m going to stop talking now.”

Lee turned a bit more and leaned up to kiss Tarin softly. "You don't have to stop," she said after pulling back just enough to be able to speak. "You're kinda cute when you ramble." Especially after how hard it was to get him to talk to begin with.

Well, it seemed like Lee at least understood where Tarin had been coming from and he nodded as she told him not to worry about it.

That made Tarin feel better. He was trying to say more, to explain what was going on in his head so that the things he did made more sense and the things he said didn’t seem so out of the blue all of the time.

They were apparently going to let the topic of brave cooking drop. If anyone had asked, Tarin was a bit frustrated by that whole attitude. Why couldn’t it be brave to cook? Tarin thought it was pretty brave of him to go into elevators. Just because something was commonplace didn’t mean that it couldn’t be a big deal.

Quiet was probably for the best right now though, at least after the day Lee had had.

Lee didn’t necessarily agree with Tarin’s sentiment though because…well, because she said so. She also kissed him, which Tarin figured was a pretty good indicator that she was sincere. Lee also didn’t move very far when she broke the kiss and said that she thought he was cute when he rambled.

Really? Tarin didn’t feel cute when he rambled. No, he felt a combination of stupid and frustrated when he couldn’t parse his thoughts and feelings well enough to articulate them like a functional adult.

Still…

“Better be careful complimenting me like that…” he said, leaning in for another quick kiss, “Next thing you know I’ll never shut up.”

If there was a time to ask, this was probably it, but Tarin hesitated for a moment before speaking again , ”While I’m being dumb…were we really talking about puzzles?” he asked.

Lee smiled as she returned Tarin's kiss. "And who said that would be a bad thing?" Lee asked in return.

It was true, they had had some interesting conversations over the previous months, and not all of them had been resulting from negative personal experiences.

"As long as you let me get a few words in every so often, I don't think I'd have a problem with that," Lee added teasingly after a couple of moments.

But Tarin made a comment about 'while he was dumb', and Lee was about to dispute that when he continued.

And Lee couldn't help but laugh softly. "I mean, if you really do want to do a puzzle, we can," she replied as she shook her head, then gave him another kiss. "But no, I wasn't."

“I mean…if you like nonsensical rambling, who am I to argue?” Tarin countered when Lee seemed to think that him talking more was a good thing. Who would even think that?

She wouldn’t mind only being able to get a few words in every so often? Tarin tried to picture that scenario in his head and it was a really difficult thing to do. What on Earth would he talk about enough that Lee would have to worry about getting a word in? No, Tarin figured he’d continue to let Lee do most of the talking. Surely it was better that way for everyone involved…whenever he talked too much Lee got embarrassed or he said silly things that she didn’t understand. It was far better to really think through what he said before he said it. Most of the time anyway.

Tarin saw the brief look on Lee’s face when he mentioned that he was being dumb, but she caught on quickly enough and laughed. “I didn’t even know we had any puzzles…” he said, laughing softly when Lee commented that if he was interested they could do a puzzle. Then they were kissing again and Lee confirmed that whether or not the puzzles actually existed, that was not what she had been talking about. That was excellent news.

It was still fairly early though and the day had been weird, and despite the fact that Tarin was grinning a little bit like the fool he was, he took a deep breath and sat back on the couch. “Later then…” he said, trying to turn his attention back to the TV.

”What the heck even happened with the pies?” he said, because they were all cooking again.

Who was he to argue? Lee shrugged and gave Tarin another kiss. "I'd say a smart man, knowing not to argue," Lee replied with a smile.

But Tarin didn't even know they had puzzles? Well, he must not have dug too deeply into any of the closets, Lee realized. "Of course we have puzzles. A child lives here." Lee paused a moment in thought, her eyes glancing toward the hallway to the bedroom, and the closets in that hallway.

"I know we have a few Paw Patrol puzzles. Definitely a Superman, and I think one of Batman. But if you were hoping for zoo or farm animals, I'm going to have to disappoint you. Those didn't make the move down from Toronto."

Despite that, Tarin seemed to very much appreciate the fact that she hadn't actually been talking about puzzles. At least that was Lee's guess based on the grin he had on his face when he said 'later'.

Either that or he really liked puzzles a lot more than she would have ever expected.

As Tarin leaned back against the couch again and spoke, Lee frowned in confusion and turned her attention back to the TV as well. "I have no idea," she admitted. "But also, what in the world are they making now?"

“I learned that lesson really quickly. “ Tarin said when Lee pointed out that a smart man knew not to argue, “Only took a couple of object lessons…”

All of this kissing was not conducive to anything other than more kissing though, he had to think.

And well, Tarin supposed that it made sense that there were puzzles around. Kevin just never came out of his room enough to express any interest of them and when Lee pointed out that they were all probably kid franchise related, he nodded thoughtfully. At least a few of those were familiar to Tarin and he wondered if the rest weren’t simply because they were kid stuff that he’d never paid attention to or if it was because things were different on this side of the rift.

”I assumed that if you had puzzles they were the kind with no edges or that they were all one color or the ones that had some kind of trick to them.” Lee was smart and she had a lot of time on her hands sometimes, that sort of puzzle would have passed the time far better than the ones that children used for idle amusement.

It was all moot though because they hadn’t actually been talking about puzzles. Thinking about that was about as conducive to anything other than kissing as kissing was though, s Tarin turned his attention back to the show as Lee asked what the contestants were making now.

Tarin squinted at the TV a bit, focusing now as the show cut back and forth between the competitors who were melting things and mixing things, and doing all sorts of things.

“I don’t even really know….” he said, “But since we’re already kind of lost in this episode….” he added, leaning down for one more kiss.

Tarin had learned a lot of 'lessons', of varying kinds, since the spring. Not that he had had to learn any (other than the initial one of her not leaving him to deal with the aftermath of the merge on his own), not that she would have made him learn any.

But there were at least a couple, such as believing when she said she'd like something regardless of what he thought, that were important. That if he hadn't learned them it would have meant that in one way or another he wouldn't be the man she had fallen in love with.

Tarin actually thought that she would have those kind of impossible puzzles? "I think you greatly overestimate my patience," she told him.

Though, she could focus on things for hours upon hours if they interested her. Or if they were important and she was determined.

Or if she was worrying.

The kinds of puzzles Tarin was referring to didn't fall into any of those categories. Lee doubted that she would manage to get one of those even a quarter finished before she got frustrated and gave up on it.

After Tarin asked about what they were making on the show now, Tarin said he didn't know. And as Lee focused on the screen, she couldn't figure it out either.

Then Tarin was leaning closer again. Smiling, Lee met him partway, happily returning the kiss, letting her lips linger on his. "Are you saying we should stay lost?" she whispered.

Had he greatly overestimated Lee’s patience? Maybe with puzzles, but Lee was definitely one of the most patient people Tarin knew…at least in some ways. Tarin didn’t say that out loud though, they’d just been over the fact that arguing was the wrong choice.

It was probably wrong to assume that just because Lee had time on her hands more than the average person that she’d be into puzzles. In fact, Lee didn’t really do any of the hobbies that people seemed to use to fill up a lot of time. From what Lee had told him, she usually used long nights awake to think through different situations and scenarios, or plan for certain eventualities.

A puzzle every now and then might have been a nice change of pace for her though.

Then again, maybe not. The important fact was that no puzzles like that were lurking in the apartment and Lee was smiling as Tarin leaned in for that next kiss.

Lee didn’t even really pull back this time, and Tarin smiled as she spoke, “I think that’s an excellent idea.” he said, leaning back into the kiss, the show temporarily forgotten.