Work Text:
Toralei didn't like thunderstorms. No, she hated thunderstorms.
She understood they were just a natural part of the weather cycle and typically not dangerous so long as you didn't go outside in steel armor, but they'd always freaked her out ever since she was a little kid.
This fear became especially bad after she'd been tortured by witches. By complete coincidence, there'd been a storm going on when she was attacked, permanently forming a link in her mind between the memory of her attack and thunderstorms.
She was already a bit irritated because she'd been paired up with Clawdeen Wolf, of all people, for a class assignment. Sure, the two weren't enemies anymore, but friends also felt like one hell of a stretch.
Still, she endured. She supposed there were definitely worse people to get paired with, at least in terms of productivity. Clawdeen, as it turned out, was actually pretty knowledgeable on the subject they were working on, which she hadn't been expecting from a half-monster who'd been solely raised by a human almost her whole life.
It all went to shit, though, when a sudden clap of thunder radiated in from outside, shaking the whole library with the aftershocks. Her whole body immediately went rigid and Clawdeen shot her a concerned look.
This was bad. This was really bad. Not only was there apparently a thunderstorm now (which had not been on the forecast that morning when she checked), but she also couldn't let Clawdeen Wolf know that she had a fear of thunderstorms.
"Just startled me" she said dismissively, trying to force the shake out of her hands and voice. Clawdeen gave her a small, sympathetic smile that made her want to crawl into a hole and die.
It wasn't long before another clap of thunder came along and shook her to her very core. She was unable to suppress the flinch or the terrified whimper, and her breathing was picking up at an alarming rate, as was the pitter-patter of her heart.
"Toralei, it's okay if you're freaked o-"
"I am not freaked out!" Toralei objected maybe a bit too passionately. Her whole body was trembling at this point and she was completely hopeless to stop it. The cat was out of the bag, so to speak. Clawdeen knew she was freaking out. Great.
"Tor-" Clawdeen was cut off by another clap of thunder, which caused the werecat to squeal in fear and leap under the study table.
Clawdeen just sat there for a moment, unsure of what to do. While she wasn't rivals with Toralei anymore, the two were hardly friends, and she'd also never seen the girl freaked out like this before. She wasn't sure how exactly to approach the situation and she felt stuck.
Her unsure daze was quickly broken by the panicked whimpers coming from under the table. Personal comfort be damned, she had to at least try.
She cautiously got out of her seat and kneeled down to look under the table. Toralei was curled in a ball, her terrified eyes poking out from behind her knees and darting around frantically, as though the world was closing in on her.
Clawdeen had only experienced a panic attack once in her life, and it was when she'd first shifted into her human form. She tried to remember what Frankie had done to calm her down. Talking her down and... Some sort of bubbly water...
She didn't have bubbly water, but she did have her voice.
"Hey, Toralei" she said in a soft voice. Toralei's eyes continued to dart about but landed solidly on her a few times. As good a start as any, Clawdeen thought. She reached out her hand but the werecat flinched away, so she quickly retracted it. "No touch. Got it"
"They're coming" Toralei began to mutter repeatedly. Clawdeen frowned. She looked around but no one else seemed to be near their corner of the library.
"Who's coming?"
"The witches" Toralei said. "They're coming to take me back. That's why there's a thunderstorm" she explained. The rational part of her brain knew that didn't really make any sense, but that part of her brain was a shrimp in comparison to the vast majority, which was currently panicking. "There was a thunderstorm last time, so-"
"Toralei, I promise you, no witches are trying to get in here right now" Clawdeen said. "Even if they were, I'm not letting you get kidnapped, okay? You're safe here"
It took a few minutes, but Toralei's panic attack began to let up and she silently moved herself closer to Clawdeen. The immediate trauma response may have finished its course, but she still decidedly hated thunderstorms.
Clawdeen allowed the sudden switch in behavior and didn't comment on Toralei's sudden clinginess, instead just wrapping her arms around the clearly afraid girl, occasionally muttering basic reassurances whenever another clap of thunder came down, causing the werecat's trembling to worsen.
When the storm eventually decided to go away and bother someone else, Toralei came to her senses and realized how close in proximity she'd gotten to the other girl.
She quickly pulled out of the hug and got out from under the table, brushing herself off and blushing furiously- Whether it was embarrassment or realization that she didn't completely hate that closeness was beyond her.
"So..." Clawdeen started awkwardly, also getting out from under the table. "You wanna finish working on the project, or-"
"Yes"
"Okay"
They would end up getting an A+ on that assignment, something which Toralei found inexplicably fascinating, and, when possible, the pair always tried to work together in that class from that point forward.