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Tarin said that he had only lasted two minutes. That didn’t sound very long in terms of time, but elevator rides generally didn’t last very long. Even at the Empire State Building, Lee didn’t think they had been in the elevator for that long.

So surely two minutes was long enough, right? Since Tarin seemed so determined to do this, Lee supposed it could make sense for him to continue working on this until he could be at least semi-comfortable in the elevator for two minutes.

Or at the very least not fighting off panic.

But then Tarin mentioned Shin, and Lee got confused again. Shin had put Tarin in a box? But there were other scenarios.

Lee’s eyes widened again, this time in shock and horror as she realized that Shin of all people had helped Tarin do the exact thing that the cult group he’d fallen in with when he first came to New York had done to torture ‘train’ Tarin.

”What?” Lee exclaimed before becoming speechless for a moment. ”Why the hell would you do that, Tarin? After how much all that ****** you up when you were a kid?”

Even after he said not to look at him like she was, Lee continued to stare at Tarin for a few moments.Then Lee went to scoot closer to him on the couch, only realizing at the last second that she still had her plate on her lap.

Finally turning away from Tarin, Lee moved the plate onto the table before she shifted a few inches closer to him on the couch. Then she held her hand out toward him, close but not making contact. It was there, she was there, if he wanted.

”Are you alright, Tarin?’ She asked, her face a mix of sadness and concern. ”Why in the world would you do that?”

Lee asked about Tarin being hungry and he didn’t answer. Tarin just sat there in silence. It hadn’t even been a question to do with emotions, nothing about what had happened that day, and yet he wasn’t answering, wasn’t speaking to her.

Lee was starting to contemplate telling Tarin to just go back to his room if he wasn’t going to talk to her at all when he actually spoke.

This was all because of his problems with elevators, the issues he was having with the claustrophobia? Which he had decided to do something about because she had been trying to find stairs for him the other night at the mansion.

”But it’s not ridiculous, Tarin,” Lee told him gently as she turned to face him more directly. ”I used to have full on panic attacks myself at the thought of becoming pregnant. And I was just scared and worried about what would happen, it’s not like my panic attacks were caused by actually being in a situation you have a phobia of.”

Lee sat there for a moment just looking at Tarin, her plate sitting all but forgotten on her lap. ”But I can understand why talking about all that would put you in a mood. I mean, it was harder than I expected it to be when I went to talk with Dr Rossi today, and we didn’t even dig into anything serious.”

Tarin simply shrugged and turned toward his room and the bathroom. Lee stood there just watching him walk away, a frown on her face, until he turned into his bedroom.

This is not what their relationship was like. Even after the collapse at the building site, when she had actually forced a conversation that Tarin had tried walking away from, the situation hadn’t been like this between them.

Making her way back to the couch, Lee ordered dinner, then curled up with her arms wrapped around her legs. No, the only thing that she could compare this to was how Tarin had been acting immediately after the merge, when he had been trying to get rid of her.

But that didn’t make sense, everything that morning had been good. Normal.

This evening was anything but.

As she sat there, Lee could hear Tarin make his way into the bathroom, door closing, then a while later him making his way back to his room. If things were actually fine, Tarin would be making his way out to the living room again any moment.

But he didn’t. The minutes continued to tick past, and Lee didn’t feel Tarin’s energy moving.

Just as she was starting to wonder if she should go check on him, Lee heard the knock at the door. Getting up, she went to go get the delivery. Hopefully food would make things better.

Tarin was saying a lot to try and convince Lee that everything was fine and whatever it was he had done that day was nothing to worry about. All while not actually telling her anything about what it was that had happened. It all sounded very much like when she was trying to get Kevin off of a topic without actually telling him what that topic was.

And other than possibly the ‘you don’t need to worry’, he wasn’t lying to her, but that was only because he wasn’t actually telling her anything.

Plus, Tarin seemed to be stressing the word ‘fine’, which he had a tendency of saying when he was trying to tell her that his issues with the claustrophobia were ‘fine’. Including when they were in an elevator and she could see the near panic in his eyes.

Lee just raised an eyebrow at Tarin as she looked up at him. ”If it’s so much nothing to worry about, then why won’t you tell me what it is, Tarin?”

It had certainly been a tough day for Lee. It had taken a while, but she had finally managed to track down Dr Rossi, the woman Lee had needed (been forced) to talk to after she had had the breakdown after the fight at the pharmaceutical company after that dream so many years ago. Lee had tracked her down and scheduled an appointment to try and see if she was still a safe option. If she could still be counted on for more confidentiality than doctor patient privilege, as she had been at the Labs.

That appointment had been that afternoon, and the woman had been asking Lee plenty of her own questions, which quickly dug far deeper than Lee had ever thought that day would go.

Especially since she had sought out Dr Rossi for Tarin. He had asked who someone like them, with their powers and all the inherent issues that came along with them, could possibly talk to professionally to get help. That felt like it had been ages ago, but really was only a few months earlier.

Lee knew that Tarin wouldn't want to talk with Dr Rossi, but she didn't know what else to do. Since the building collapse, Tarin's claustrophobia seemed to just be getting worse. And while Lee was fairly sure she could continue talking Tarin through his panic attacks so he didn't end up in a position where a merge was possible, she also knew that she couldn't always be with him

By the time Tarin got home, Lee was curled up on the couch with a cup of coffee, staring at the TV but not actually watching it as she tried, again, to figure out what to say to Tarin.

Setting her mug down on the table, Lee got up to move over to Tarin (she could use a hug after the afternoon she'd had just as much as she needed the right words to magically come out of her mouth), but frowned when she heard his words as he was immediately heading to the bathroom. Even after going for a run by himself, Tarin always greeted her better than that before going to shower.

”What happened?” Lee asked, feeling a little anxious. ” Is everything ok?”

Lee nodded slightly when Tarin brought up that she never set her alarm for any more than 8 hours. It wasn’t such a hard and fast rule when she was able to sleep in the same bed as someone, especially if there was contact while she slept, but it was good and easiest to just stick with that.

Then Tarin was thanking her for trusting him like she had. Lee leaned in and gave him a kiss before pulling back with a smile. ”You have done a good job helping me wake up in the mornings,” she said. ”It’s such a habit to set my alarm every single night, so I really didn’t think about it. But if I had,” Lee smiled at Tarin again. Happily. ”I would have trusted you to wake me for a while now…”