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Lightning cracks across the sky, and right next to Zeke, Tatiana flinches. If the pouring rain wasn’t bad enough, it’s now accompanied by thunder and lightning. The droplets beat down against the cobblestone of the city street, glistening under the lamplight. To be honest, the scenery doesn’t look half bad.
It’s just going to be hell to walk in.
They’re trapped under the awning of a shop. The streets are deserted, because every Rigelian who knows anything knows that you don’t stay outside for rain. It could start as a drizzle, but turn into something much worse in a minute flat. It could go from a little smattering to a storm, which is what it has done now. Zeke and Tatiana are a little bit wet, but managed to find shelter before it started to really pour.
Tatiana holds her hand out, collecting rain. “Maybe it’s not that bad. Let’s try walking in it.”
“No. We’ll catch our deaths.” Zeke sighs as thunder rolls over the dark gray clouds. “What miserable weather. I don’t know if we’ll make it back to camp tonight.”
She frowns and looks to the supplies in her arms. “We have to. Everybody was really excited when we said we were going shopping.”
“They’ll survive for another night without their things.” He drags a hand through his damp hair and looks out at the rain. “We’ll find an inn and spend the night. Provided that this rain even lets up enough for us to step out in it, that is.”
“It was so nice earlier today,” she complains.
“Hmm. It was.”
They wait for a long time. The rain doesn’t get any worse, but it doesn’t let up. They sit on a bench behind them, snuggling up to one another, and wait. Twenty minutes pass, and then thirty, and when Zeke announces that it’s been an hour as he puts his pocket watch away, she huffs.
“This is ridiculous.” Tatiana reaches up and puts a hand to his cheek. “We’re going to be stuck here forever.”
“I think forever is quite the exaggeration,” Zeke replies. “But it does seem like it will be a while.”
She grimaces, looking out at the storm. “Hmph.”
“Don’t be pouty,” he scolds. “This is nice, isn’t it? A little alone time.”
“Hm.”
He frowns and shifts towards her, resting a gloved hand to her cheek. Her lips are set in a definite pout, and she doesn’t look at him until he starts caressing her.
“We’ll get a nice room,” he promises. “And sleep on a nice bed for the first time in gods know how long.”
“63 days,” Tatiana says. “But it’s not like I’m counting.”
“You’re pretty homesick, aren’t you?” he presses.
She looks into his eyes for a moment, then pulls out of his touch and looks away. “No.”
She’s lying. She’s a homebody. For all the time Zeke has known her, she’s loathed leaving the village, unless it is to go to the market with someone accompanying her. Many people used to be frightened, what with Nuibaba and Jerome’s men crawling the Plains. It has never been safe, she told him once. There is always something waiting to devour you, in one way or another. Something waiting for you to walk into its lair.
Now, she’s miles away from home and comfort. She’s far beyond the Plains or her seashore village, sleeping on the ground every night, tending to the bloody and dying every second of the day. It’s different from her normal life, and she must feel bad. He knows she feels bad. She doesn’t smile like she does at home. There’s a heavier lilt to her precious voice. War is obviously not her best environment, and it hurts him to see her suffer like this.
Zeke wonders if there’s anything he can do to make her a little less homesick.
Well, there might be one thing, but-
He sighs as he stands up. Tatiana looks up at him curiously, and then with utter bafflement when he takes off his cloak.
“What are you doing?” she asks. “You’ll get cold.”
“I’m well aware,” he mumbles.
“Then stop taking that off.”
He rests it over the back of the bench and rolls up his sleeves as he regards the rain outside the awning. He frowns, displeased that it’s still going strong, but he doesn’t have a choice. With a grimace, he leaves the shelter of the awning and gets instantly drenched.
“Zeke!” He looks back at Tatiana, who has put the shopping to the side and gotten up. She looks worried, her hands to her chest. “You’re going to catch a cold.”
“It’s not that bad,” he protests.
It’s actually kinda freezing.
“What are you doing?” she asks again. “Come back here before you get even wetter.”
He’s already soaked to the bone, so he ignores her. He walks further out into the street, pushing his sopping wet hair out of his face, and then turns towards her. He holds out a hand and says, “Come on.”
Tatiana crosses her arms. “Excuse me?”
The back of his neck gets a little hot, and he looks away from her. “Come on, I’m trying to, you know, be romantic?”
She looks puzzled, but after a moment, takes her own cloak off and hesitantly joins him in the rain. She clenches her teeth and hugs herself instantly, shivering, but doesn’t let it stop her from wading through the puddles to get to him.
“I don’t like this,” she complains over the thunder. “It’s not really romantic.”
Zeke frowns. “Well-”
“Come on, since we’re soaked now, we may as well go walk to an inn. I hope they have a bath, or-”
He takes her wrists in his hands and pulls her closer. She stumbles over a cobblestone, misplaced and jutting up out of the ground. She falls against him with a squeak, turning her eyes up to him uncertainly when he puts his hands on her shoulders to steady her.
“It’s cold.” Her voice is quiet beneath the rumbling of thunder and pounding of rain. “I wanna go ho- I want to go inside.”
A slip of the tongue that tells him that he’s absolutely right. She is homesick. And she is trying to hide it. He cups her cheeks in his hands, brushes the strands of hair stuck to her away, and bends down to kiss her.
It’s not a romantic setting by any means. The thunder is unpleasantly loud, the lightning a little too close for comfort, and the rain freezing cold. But he doesn’t mind, and Tatiana doesn’t seem to either. She tilts her head back to meet his lips, all of her complaints melted away. The rain beats down on them, but it doesn’t matter.
It’s not the best kiss they’ve ever had, standing here in a storm, but it’s still amazing. Zeke can still feel those sparks flying when he puts a hand on her waist, like it’s their first kiss all over again. He feels like they are the only two people in the world when she parts her lips for him, sighs, and puts a hand to the back of his neck. He feels warm, loved, and protected beneath her healing hand, and cannot think of a better place for him to be.
He pulls away from her, noting with amusement the way Tatiana’s eyes linger on his lips. He leans back down for another kiss, as eager as always to give her every little thing that she wants. There’s no issue with it, because there’s nobody out on the streets with them. They are completely alone as her tongue slips into his mouth and as his hand wanders a little lower down her back than appropriate.
A particularly harsh crack of lightning breaks them apart before things get hot and heavy. The lightning has invited more rain, and it comes down in one big curtain, slamming over them so hard that even Zeke flinches. Tatiana shakes her head, dislodging her bangs from her eyes, and looks up at him.
“I still don’t get what this was about!” she shouts.
He pushes his fingers against his lips to pick up smears of her lipstick. “We did this once before. Remember?”
She stares at him. “What?”
“You’re homesick,” he yells over the thunder. “So I just wanted to try and do something about it. We did this before, back home.”
“We went out in the pouring rain like idiots? That doesn’t sound right.”
Zeke remembers the event in perfect clarity: A month after they had gotten together. A rainy, foggy spring evening, warmed up with a few glasses of mulled wine. He remembers, in perfect detail, practically begging Tatiana to come back into the church before she caught a cold, but she had simply smiled at him. She’d held out a hand and said, so easily, “Come on! Have some fun!” He remembers getting soaked right down to his bones and mumbling and grumbling while she splashed through the puddles, but also remembers that every annoyance he’d had had slipped away when she’d pulled him in for a kiss.
A kiss in the rain. Right out of a romance novel. It had felt good.
“I think you were probably drunk,” Zeke guesses. He tightens his grip on her shoulders. “I just- I’m sorry.”
Her shoulders shake underneath his grip, and he looks up to her. She has a hand to her mouth, disguising her mirth, and her eyes are filled with unbridled delight. He likes seeing them so bright, after weeks of seeing them dull with misery. He pulls her bangs out of her face to see them better, instantly put at ease. War might be hell, but it’s all fine if he gets to see those beautiful eyes.
“You remember?” he asks hopefully.
“I probably was drunk, because I don’t remember a lick of that,” she responds, and then bursts into peals of laughter when his face falls. “You’re so cute!”
“I’m try- I’m trying!” he stammers. “I just wanted to do something that would remind you of home.”
Tatiana keeps laughing, but manages to say, “I’ll be homesick until I go home. You can’t fix that.”
“Oh.”
She reaches up and smooths his hair, plastered to his skin, out of his face. “But you’re cute. And you’re considerate. And I love you so much.”
He’s certain that he turns violently red.