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He isn’t scared of storms. If you dare suggest that in earshot of Delacy, you’ll live to regret it. He isn’t scared of anything.
He just… doesn’t like storms. They have no right to be so freaking loud, the thunder rumbling like the sky is about to come crashing down, and the flashes of shockingly bright lightning hurt his eyes. Storms are shit and Delacy hates them.
(But that doesn’t mean he’s scared.)
Still, when he wakes up in the middle of the night to a crash of thunder, Delacy’s stomach clenches and he wraps his arms around himself. He isn’t scared… he just didn’t expect such a loud noise to wake him up. A flash of lightning makes him jump, and Delacy…
He wants to go back to sleep and wake in the morning to a bright sunny sky as Miss Edie greets him a good morning and Miss Victoria makes him breakfast and then the others will come back, and he’ll get to see Nate again.
But that’s not the truth. Even though it makes him feel like a coward, Delacy acts like a goddamn kid and pulls his blankets over his head. He curls into a ball in his little blanket nest and clamps his hands over his ears to block out the rain beating against the window and the constant claps of thunder. He even rocks himself from side to side, which he doesn’t do often (and certainly never in front of people, because someone once told him it made him look like a freak and Delacy has never been able to forget that moment), desperate to calm down.
He may be young, but Delacy is skilled and competent and a better shot than most adults he’s met. He can’t be defeated by a simple thunderstorm…
And yet, Delacy spends the rest of the night hiding under his blankets, waiting for the storm to stop.