Jack was all for snow, of course, but its wetter, more persistent cousin he could do without. Spring rains drummed into the slick Chicago pavement, the ever-present dusting of pollen driven into the gutter by thick streams of water. His bike tires skidded nervously over the slippery side street to his apartment, or else tore straight through puddles, soaking the hems of his jeans. There was something about rain that made him claustrophobic- something about looking up from the sidewalk from what seemed like the bottom of the lake that touched him with such a disturbing familiarity that Jack couldn't stand the slightest of drizzles.

At what seemed like long last, he arrived at the front stoop of his apartment complex. Locking up his bike hastily, he sprinted for the door and threw himself into the stagnant safety of hallway. Three flights of stairs later, and almost secure in his apartment, Jack's heart lifted at a familiar sound- the voice of his friend, Rapunzel- and then sank again as the voices grew clearer. She was at it again with her roommate. It was just two of them- Rapunzel and the loud Scottish one- but they made enough racket for at least five people. He huffed a sigh, anticipating at least another hour of their noise through the thin walls of his apartment, and was about to draw out his keys when he noticed the pile of bags in the middle of the hallway, and then the girl to whom they belonged, marching out of her apartment to meet them. An angry voice pursued her from inside.

"-will not have you comin' back in the wee hours of the morning every day, gettin' paint all over my carpet, lettin' your lizard-"

"Chameleon!"

"-your stinking lizard run about- and then you come home with all these bruises-I will not have a roommate who's in some sort of fight club-"

"I told you that's not what happened!"

"You expect me to believe you held off a mugger with a frying pan? Who carries around a frying pan?"

"If you would listen-"

"Out. Out!"

The door slammed shut with a resounding finality. Rapunzel stood just beyond the threshold, mouth still open, brow furrowed, like she was waiting for the door to reopen any minute, at least for her to finish her sentence. Jack watched uncomfortably as she let out her breath, shoulders dropping, and picked up her bags. He shifted from foot to foot as an uneasy silence filled the hallway, his damp socks squelching unpleasantly. So close to being alone in his apartment. And yet.

"Rapunzel." Startled, she jumped a bit before swinging around to meet his gaze, green eyes wide with surprise.

"Oh! Oh, no, did you- you heard all of that. Oh, I'm sorry. It's- um. Nevermind. Sorry."

"Do you have a place to spend the night?" Again, she seemed alarmed by the question.

"Me? A place- of course. I can- I mean I'm sure there's someone who-are you laughing at me?"

"Honestly, blondie, you're an abysmal liar. Come on."

Jack opened the door to his apartment and returned to pick up her bags, ignoring her protestations (ignoring as well the slight jolt of excitement in his chest. She had been kicked out of her apartment; it wasn't fair of him to feel such a rush at the thought of getting to be so close to her.) He wasn't about to let a five-foot-three, hundred-pound girl wander the streets of Chicago late at night looking for a place to crash. And try as he might not to think about it too hard, he wouldn't mind the company, not at all.

"I won't ask, I promise, as long as you tell me about the part with the frying pan."

"You wouldn't believe me," she shot back, shuffling reluctantly through the doorway with what looked like a bag of paintbrushes. He laid her things in a pile next to the couch and turned to face her.

"Seriously, though. Are you alright?" He leaned forward to inspect her face. He caught the shadow of a bruise on her jaw before she turned away, hiding behind a curtain of wheat blonde hair.

"Don't worry about it. Thank you, though." Jack pressed his lips together in a thin line, displeased at the thought of anyone trying to hurt someone like her. Furious, actually, but those feelings as well were on the list of things he was trying his damndest to ignore at the moment. He decided to leave it alone for the time being.

"You can sleep on the couch. I've got extra blankets and everything. Just until you find somewhere more permanent, anyway." She nodded gratefully, small hands clenching and unclenching beneath the too-long sleeves of her jacket. From what he had gathered about her, she was passionately independent, an explorer, self-sufficient; it must have been killing her to have to depend on someone's charity like this.

"Tea?" He asked, breaking the silence. She returned to herself, nodded, turned to him with that thousand-watt smile of hers, and they fell into step again. Friends. Roommates, at least for now. This time, Jack couldn't ignore the warmth in his chest at the thought.

…

As "just a couple nights" turned into a week, and then two, Jack and Rapunzel fell into routine. By the time he woke up for work in the blue light of pre-dawn, she had already been up for hours, cleaning, painting, baking. He could understand sometimes why her last roommate had gotten fed up- the early morning-racket, the paints on every open surface, and of course, the lizard. Chameleon. Whatever. But the weather cleared for a while, and when the sun rose in full force each morning, catching each straw-colored strand on Rapunzel's head and turning it to a mess of honey gold as she painted, Jack would wonder how he ever got on alone. She breathed life into his apartment where before it had been sometimes so still that he had to leave and walk around the city in order to breathe again.

He worked all day at a café downtown, taking orders and making mochas and charming half the city's female population through the doors; he won jars of tips and crowds of returning customers with his easy smile. And still, before her it seemed that every day he would return home to an empty apartment with nothing but his tip jars and a veritable mountain of coffee ground into the lines of his pale hands.

But each day now he would open the door to another burst of noise and light, another, Jack, don't get too mad, but I may have spilled acrylic paint all over your couch, and each day he would pretend to be annoyed, would pretend not to love cleaning up her latest culinary disaster, would pretend that something didn't tug at his chest a little every time he remembered that this was temporary.

I won't get too attached, he promised himself as he lay awake at night, her very presence in the next room heavy against his chest, cheating him of sleep. I won't, he thought, so full of thoughts of her that he couldn't eat, that he looked for her everywhere. But she would look at him sometimes like he were a puzzle, look right through him when nobody else bothered to look at all, and he was convinced she could see something there that he himself didn't understand. It made him ashamed, somehow. Hopeful.

It was one such time on a Tuesday night when it first really occurred to him. They were sitting on the couch watching some action movie, exhausted from the day- and she turned to him, with that one look- turned to him, and holy shit, he thought, heart hammering. I blew it.