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Noel loves thunderstorms.
He loves how powerful they can be; how they can shake the entire foundation of a structure and, as a result, the foundation of one’s very soul as they stand within the quaking building; how they bring the rain and the lightning to simultaneously drench and torch the earth.
What an absolutely magnificent aesthetic.
In the early aubadoir of night, Noel awakens to the deep rumble of a thunderstorm. A purring baritone of thunder greets him as his eyes flutter open, and a flash of white lightning through his curtains is quick to give him its own hellos. Rain tapping against the roof and windows is a soothing white noise to Noel’s drowsy mind, and he rolls over in his bed, burying himself deeper into the warmth of his blankets, ready to once again drift off into the cosmic intangibility of his dreams.
And then, he feels something, and he realizes exactly why he had woken up in the first place.
The back of his throat itches; he’s thirsty.
What an irritating thing late-night thirst is. Like a conveniently annoying scratch on a DVD that stops a movie right before the good part or a perfectly-placed ad in a music playlist, it brings the sleepy comfort of a half-awake daze to a buffer. Noel wants to just ignore it, but it’s like there’s a gardener on a night shift digging out the back of his throat, and he has no choice but to haul himself out of the warmth of his bed and tend to his body’s demands.
He has to trudge all the way to the kitchen to get a glass of water, and he makes a mental note to start leaving a water bottle in his room so he doesn’t have to do this again.
At night, his house is like an underdark replica of the real thing, caged by shadows and warped in darkness. The wildred of walking through it fills him with the most morbid thrill, tip-toeing on the cusp of nonfictional existence and the set of a psychological horror movie. At any moment, he expects a killer to leap out, raising a gleaming weapon over their mask-clad head, which has already been soaked in the hot blood of their previous victim. He isn’t scared, though, oh no. He is a creature of the nocturne, thriving within the dusky gloom of night.
He always thought he fit in better with the night than the day. He tried to be nocturnal once, when he was much younger, wanting to flourish in his most energized state with the moon and sleep away from the heat of the sun. It didn’t end up working, much to his disappointment. So now he admires the obscure beauty of the dark from afar, surrendering himself to the harsh light of daytime, like a bat trapped in a cage that’s open to dawn.
Lightning torches through the windows, searing a brilliant blaze of white across the house like a photographer’s camera flash, and a drumming crash of thunder comes sprinting right behind it. But beneath it, Noel swears he hears something, something that makes him pause right as he’s about to open up a kitchen cabinet to grab himself a cup.
It almost sounded like…a whimper.
As stated before, Noel is not scared, he lives for the frightening atmosphere of earth’s latest hours, but he will admit that he is a little bit unnerved hearing something like that in the middle of the night. It sounds almost like a wounded animal, and at first, he rationalizes that it may just be the pet cat, Nyx, but then he feels the brush of fur against his ankle and realizes that she followed him from his room. Which means it can’t be her.
Noel debates what he should do, and then he finds himself slowly creeping closer to the source of the sound, which had come from the living room. A curious creature he is, indeed, and he can’t help but be driven by his interest in all things odd and macabre. So, he inches his way toward the origin of the noise, wanting to figure out what made it.
Thunder rattles the house, and again, Noel hears the sound. This time, it’s more like a soft, feeble sob. Very human-like.
It’s only when Noel sees the lump on the couch that he realizes what is making these noises.
“Ocean?” he says groggily.
He had seen the edges of the lump quaking, but when he says the name, it abruptly stops. A moment later, a head peeks out from under what he assumes is a nest of blankets.
“Yeah?” the annoying little ginger responds. She had stayed the night at his house because of a project they were working on. It ended up going a lot later than they were expecting, and Noel’s mom happily offered Ocean a place to stay, if she wished to sleep over (his mom ADORED Ocean, much to Noel’s chagrin).
“What are you doing?” Noel asks her.
“Uhh, sleeping,” Ocean answers in her usual stuck-up way. “What are you doing?”
“I’m getting water,” Noel says. He then pauses, hearing the subtle quivering around Ocean’s words and the soft sniffles her darkened form is emitting. “Are you crying?”
There’s a moment of hesitation. And then: “No.”
That’s a lie, and Noel knows it. Even though he can’t see Ocean’s face very well because of how dark it is, he can still pick out all the signs of someone who’s been crying or is actively crying, and she’s managing to check off all the boxes.
“I heard you, like, sobbing,” Noel points out.
“That wasn’t me,” Ocean says quickly. Maybe a little too quick.
Noel crosses his arms. “Oh really? Then who was it?”
He thinks she may have shrugged, but he can’t quite tell in the dark. “I don’t know. But it wasn’t me.”
“God, you are so irritating,” Noel says. Ocean puts a mule to shame with the sheer amount of stubbornness she holds in her tiny body. He has no idea where she stores all of that obstinacy when she’s about the size of a bowling ball. Surely it gets exhausting to be so hard-headed all the time. “I don’t know why I’m wasting my time here. I’m getting water, then going back to bed.”
“You do that,” Ocean says.
Noel knows she can’t see him do so, but he glowers at her before walking back to the kitchen. He gets himself a glass, fills it with water, takes a long drink, and then starts heading back to his room, ready to return to the warmth of his bed.
And then, thunder crashes, and he hears a very audible squeak of fear from behind.
He should keep walking. He should just go back to his room so he can finally get to sleep again. But something is clearly wrong with Ocean, and he isn’t a monster. She may be infuriating, and she may be annoying, and she may be a pain in the ass to deal with most of the time, and she may be a ginger, and she may overall be the human personification of a toothache that never seems to go away no matter what you do to try and treat it…but he does kinda like her, and he’s capable of sympathy, thank you very much. More importantly, though, if he helps her, she’ll owe him, and a favor from Ocean O’Connell Rosenberg during high school is about as valuable as a block of gold.
So, he turns around and goes back over to the couch.
By this point, his eyes have somewhat adjusted to the darkness, and he can see Ocean huddled on the couch, bundled up in a nest of blankets. He’s almost positive that she’s shaking, causing the covers to shudder around her small body like an unstable cocoon. And then there’s also her soft sniffles, and Noel knows for a fact that she’s crying.
“Alright, what’s wrong with you?” Noel asks, and he finds himself internally wincing because he hadn’t meant to sound so fucking brash. It just came out that way. So, he tries again, smoothing down the coarse texture of his tone as he says, “Are you, like, okay?”
Ocean sniffles softly. “I’m fine.”
Noel lets out a heavy sigh that sounds more annoyed than he actually is. “You and I both know that’s not true, so why don’t we just skip over your stubbornness and cut right to whatever is bothering you?”
Despite this, Ocean still insists, “Nothing is bothering me. Except you, of course. Aren’t you supposed to be going back to your room?”
“I was,” Noel says. “And then you decided to do your best impression of a cat after it gets its tail stepped on.”
Although he can’t see the exact details of Ocean’s expression, he’s sure her whole face has gone red with embarrassment.
“So, what’s going on?”
Before Ocean can answer (and probably deny that anything is wrong again), the storm pipes up for her, letting out a ferocious roar that shudders the entire house. When it does, Noel notices the way Ocean flinches and covers her ears.
In an instant, he realizes what’s going on.
“Are you afraid of thunder, Sunfire?” Noel asks.
Even without a reply, Noel knows the answer to his question, but Ocean still barks, “No! The sound just startled me, that’s all.”
“Then why are you crying?”
“I’m not crying!”
Noel sighs again. “You’re absolutely insufferable, you know that, right?” he says.
“I do know that,” Ocean says back. “I’ve been told many times. Mostly by you.”
Noel snorts lightly.
Ocean seems to be well enough to engage in their usual banter with him, but she’s still been crying, and the thunder is clearly freaking her out, so Noel doesn’t feel right just leaving her alone in this living room. So, he lays out an offer that he will deny ever making if someone else brings it up after everything is said and done.
“You’re going to deny being afraid of the thunder, which is whatever, if that’s what helps you sleep at night, okay. It isn’t scaring you. But I don’t feel right letting you sleep in here alone, so, if you want, you can come lay with me.”
He can feel Ocean staring at him through the shadows. “Are you serious?”
“Unfortunately.”
Noel expects Ocean to turn him down, but, much to his surprise, she says, “Well… Since it would be rude to say no… Sure.”
“Alright. Take your blankets and pillow. I don’t want you stealing mine.”
Ocean laughs softly. “Okay.”
Followed by both Ocean and Nyx, Noel returns to his bedroom. It’s not too cramped in the bed with Ocean there (see her being the size of a bowling ball for reference), and she sticks to one side.
“Goodnight, Firecracker,” Noel says.
“Night, Noel,” Ocean says back.
Noel closes his eyes and drifts off to sleep…
…only to awaken again some time later.
With his thirst quenched, he isn’t too sure what it was that woke him up. At first, he thinks it may have been a particularly loud clap of thunder, which still may be true, but then he hears the soft sound of ragged breathing and watery sobs right beside him.
“Ocean?” he says.
He expects Ocean’s snappy voice to clap back almost instantly, but it doesn’t. Instead, there’s a muffled whimpering sound, and Noel knows that something is very wrong.
Reaching over, Noel turns on his bedside lamp, and the room explodes with golden radiance. Thanks to the light, Noel can properly see Ocean for the first time, and she’s curled up to be very small, tangled in the blankets, her hands pressed tightly over her ears. Her eyes are screwed shut, and tears cascade down her cheeks, wetting the pillow beneath her head. Thanks to the concerning way her breaths come out way too fast, Noel realizes she’s having a panic attack.
“Ocean, hey,” Noel says, sitting up. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re okay. It’s just thunder. It’s not going to hurt you.”
He inwardly cringes at that last part, realizing a bit too late how stupid it sounds. In some way, Ocean must know that the thunder can’t hurt her, and Noel thinks that it may not be the thunder itself that’s necessarily scaring her, aside from the loudness of it, of course. She’s probably afraid of this simple storm warping into something else, something worse, like a hurricane or tornado or even a flash flood. They’re all valid things to worry about, admittedly, but Noel needs her to calm down.
“We’re both okay, see? We’re safe in here,” Noel tells her, setting a hand on her side, feeling the way she’s shaking like a leaf in the wind.
Ocean continues to cry, continues to descend deeper into her panic attack, and Noel doesn’t know what to do. He wants to help her, he really does, seeing her like this is painful, but he doesn’t know how.
“Ocean, what can I do to help you?” Noel asks. “What do you need? What do you usually do when you’re like this?”
There’s a very small shrug in response, and it makes Noel’s heart pinch because he imagines Ocean crumpled like this at her own house during a storm, hiding under the blankets with no one around to comfort her.
It’s different this time, though. He’s there. He can do something.
“Okay, okay,” Noel says. “Do you think you can maybe turn to me?”
Ocean is stiff, and then she rolls over slowly to face Noel, keeping her hands firmly over her ears. He’s lucky that she’s even hearing him at all, but if his voice is getting through to her, he guesses that the thunder isn’t being kept out too well.
“Alright, good,” Noel says. “Now do you think you can try breathing with me? You’re having a panic attack. I don’t want you to start hyperventilating.”
Ocean nods, and Noel is able to get her to follow along with his own breathing. It takes some time, but she slowly calms down enough to uncover her ears and open her eyes. When she does, Noel smiles softly at her.
And then, with almost perfect timing, as though the storm itself had been waiting for Ocean to let her guard down, a boom of thunder so fierce it seems to rip the house in two shatters through the night. The lamp flickers out, and Ocean lets out a heartbreaking cry of distress and fear. She scrambles directly into Noel, perhaps by accident, perhaps intentionally, but regardless, she’s against him, shaking all over, and Noel puts his arms around her, holding her close, feeling the way her trembles rattle into his own skeleton. She openly weeps into his chest, no sign of her armor left over her dignity, and that’s how Noel knows this is serious. Not that he hadn’t already known before.
“Shh, shh,” Noel murmurs to Ocean, rubbing a hand up and down her back. It isn’t like him to act like this, especially with this girl, but she’s in desperate need of some comfort, and he’s willing to give it to her. He wants to give it to her. He hates seeing her like this—though he’ll never admit that out loud.
“You’re okay, you’re okay, I promise,” Noel goes on. “It’s loud, I know, but you’re safe in here. Nothing will happen to you.”
Noel continues whispering soothing things to Ocean while rubbing her back until her breathing slowly starts to even out again. She’s still crying, and she’s still shaking, but she’s calmed by degrees.
“Feeling a little better?” Noel asks. Ocean is still curled against him, but he doesn’t tell her to move.
“Yeah,” Ocean answers softly. “I think. Thanks.” She pauses. “Umm— sorry. For freaking out.”
“It’s alright,” Noel assures her. “We can keep this between us.”
“I’d appreciate that,” Ocean says.
They stay like that, Ocean held securely in Noel’s arms, as the rain continues to come down outside. When Noel looks down again, he notices that Ocean has fallen asleep against him, and he doesn’t mind. If she’s comfortable, that’s all that matters.
He can’t wait to deny this ever happened.