Chapter Text
Everything started to fall apart when Kate arrived.
Well, that’s what Javi told himself. He should’ve known better.
He didn’t notice it at first, blinded by the prospect of finally getting a successful tornado scan with her help regardless of Scott’s reservations about tracking her down and bringing her into the fold. Seeing her step out into the Oklahoma air, suitcase rolling by her side and a playful set to her jaw, all of Javi’s worries evaporated in the face of his giddiness. After all these years, she was finally by his side again.
She felt like home and he’d forgotten what that felt like.
“You ready, Kate?”
“Let’s catch ourselves a tornado.”
When she grinned at him with that familiar spark of excitement and proof that their handshake was still ingrained in their muscle memory, Javi thought he’d been transported five years back.
It was exhilarating. Intoxicating.
But it was all messing with his head.
🌪🌪🌪
“What are you doing?” Scott ambushed him in the diner the second Riggs had stood to use the restroom, disappearing past the bustling tables. Javi tore his eyes away from the window where he could see Kate and Tyler-fucking-Owens standing off in a patch of grass, the latter chattering away despite her clear disregard. Tyler was a cockroach like that, enjoying the chase too much to be dissuaded by cold shoulders or rebuttals when there was clearly something between them. Not even being cornered by Javi with the warning to stay the hell away from her hindered him. Javi dared to say it encouraged him.
“Same as you, meeting with Riggs.”
“I think we’re experiencing different conversations.”
Javi turned to Scott, perplexed. “What are you on about?”
“I’m talking about how I’m carrying this meeting,” Scott stated matter-of-factly, tapping his fingers on the table for emphasis. He plowed on before Javi could open his mouth to protest. “Ever since Kate came in here, you’ve been distracted, and now you’re trying to light Tyler on fire with how hard you’re staring at the two of them. Don’t try to deny it, Javi, I’m not stupid. I’ve already covered for you twice when you failed to register that Riggs was talking to you.”
“Get off my back, man. I’m just tired.”
Scott scoffed, lifting his hat to run a hand through his hair. “Well, maybe if you were more confident in yourself, then you wouldn’t be losing sleep over whether or not Kate cared about you. Frankly, watching you fawn and make excuses for her is embarrassing.”
Javi flinched at how close to home that hit and he had no doubt Scott knew too. Everytime Kate declined his invitations to hang out, he dreaded the potentiality that no amount of reaching out would keep her from slipping through his fingers.
“One week,” she’d told him. That was all they had together.
A waitress passed by, wordlessly refilling their waters and asking if either of them wanted more coffee. Scott declined and Javi accepted. She made a quick escape after that, sensing the tension at the table as blatantly as Javi had been able to see it grow between him and Scott over the last couple of days. He could pinpoint its exact origin to a head of blonde hair and brown eyes.
Riggs entered his peripheral vision, tipping his hat to a small family he’d moved aside for. Javi took a breath to center himself, cupping his warm coffee mug in his hands to ward off the chill tingling at his fingertips.
Scott leaned over, hissing a quiet “Get your head on straight. I’m not covering for you a third time,” before smiling at Riggs’ return to the booth.
“Shall we continue?” Riggs asked and Javi’s head pounded.
🌪🌪🌪
Javi took Scott’s words into consideration, doing his best to remain present. He followed the latter as they bounced from local to local, introducing Riggs to them and standing by as the man performed his whole sympathetic spiel before ultimately handing them his business card with the promise of a generous offer. Hearing the words coming out of Riggs’ mouth never ceased to make his skin crawl despite Scott’s reassurances.
“He’s trying to help them, Javi,” Scott explained, back when StormPAR had been nothing but an idea with minimum funding. Scott’s uncle, Marshall Riggs, had been their first big break and Javi knew just how fast they could get the company off the ground with the amount of money the man intended to give them per month. It was a gilded offer and Javi found himself caught between a rock and a hard place. He never did get over being affiliated with Riggs, signing his name on the contract with a moroseness befitting someone selling their soul to the devil.
That’s why Javi never brought up Riggs when Kate asked about their investors, keeping his explanations vague. Until she caught them in the middle of a meeting back at the diner and he had to play damage control lest she smelled the rot in the system that his gut had warned him about all those months ago. Subconsciously, he’d been afraid of what she’d thought, scared that everything he thought was wrong about Riggs’ line of work was true. And he didn’t want to face reality if it was.
Watching Kate and Tyler across the street, standing in some sort of Mexican standoff filled with terse words and high stakes, and a shared meaningful glance towards him and Riggs, he didn’t think he had a choice but to face the music.
The tornado at the rodeo was Javi’s awakening.
“Is profiting off of people’s tragedy part of your business plan?” Kate demanded, desperate to know whether he was on the wrong side of the picket fence or that he truly had no idea what he’d been dragged into. He couldn’t lie to her, not like he could lie to himself. So he tried to reason with her, parroting what Scott had told him about Riggs in hopes that she wouldn’t take a mallet to the fragile friendship he’d rekindled between them.
But when did things ever go his way?
“He’s swooping in and taking advantage of people who have just lost everything. You… you have no idea what that’s like!” She accused with not an ounce of remorse, seeming to believe her claim to be nothing but the truth, and Javi questioned just where they went wrong.
He was appalled, speechless. He could stand for a lot of things when it came to her, but this…This he couldn’t stand for. The first fracture appeared on the chains wrapped around the mental box containing everything to do with that fateful day five years ago.
“I don’t know what that’s like?” Javi repeated, staring at Kate in such disbelief and amazement that it pained him. How dare she tell him what he did and didn’t know. How dare she forget that he was right there with her when the storm came and tore their lives apart within seconds. Addy, Praveen, and Jeb were his friends just as much as they were hers and he lost them all the same. It was a slap to the face–an insult.
Never before had he been so aware of her absence in these five years, never once having blamed her for leaving him in order to save herself, and in this moment a small part of him certainly did. It took the reins and ran his mouth.
He couldn’t have stopped them if he wanted to.
“How about losing three of my best friends while you were trying to land a big fat grant for your science project?” Javi’s voice was rough with barely contained anger that sputtered out as fast as it had grown at the sight of Kate’s face, bathed in the red and blue of the police lights. It fell, shuddering into one filled with the pain of a wound not yet healed, too fresh and agitated to do anything but bleed red.
And boy, did it bleed.
Out of her and right into him.
Regret swarmed his chest, stinging like bees. He didn’t have to look at the Wranglers to know they’d caught the tail end of their conversation, forever the peanut gallery. He could feel their eyes, flickering between Kate’s stock-still figure and Javi’s jittery one, and he couldn’t seem to care when he knew that everything he’d worked so hard for was coming down around him. After this, she wouldn’t want to see him ever again. Anxiety and guilt was a ball in Javi’s chest, webbing across every nerve as he watched Kate turn her back on him in slow motion.
Please, no.
“Kate, I didn’t…wait, wait–” he begged, chasing after her. He didn’t know what he’d do if he caught her. Would he grab her, force her to stay with him–to listen to him–even if she screamed and called him heartless and a thief? Would she slap him, punch him, kick him?
(He’d let her.)
“Don’t leave like this!” His voice was ragged by now, desperation leaking from every letter of every word. “Kate!”
I can’t do this again.
Watching her--technically, his--truck tear out of the demolished parking lot, the stark realization that this was a familiar sight struck him. Him always running after her…
Chasing after her.
It’d been the same in college. When Javi found something on his scanners, he scoured the library for her. When they were chasing storms, he followed her guidance as she sniffed them out from cloud patterns and wind speeds.
Then she told him she was leaving for New York and proceeded to drop off the face of the earth, and he still chased. He kept texting, calling, hoping for a response before he drove himself into the ground. The military had been the only thing holding him together when it should’ve been her and him facing the storm side-by-side. Just like they always had.
And yet, he was left behind as she turned her back on him.
He thought this time would be different.
He was a fool.
🌪🌪🌪
“Kate’s room was over there,” a voice piped up behind Javi, startling him into dropping a cracked picture frame that looked too personal to belong to a motel. It must’ve been picked up along the tornado’s path. He knew the tornado crossed through a neighborhood, though which one was lost to him. Truthfully, most things Scott said to him before heading over to the rodeo motel fell on deaf ears, his panic towards Kate’s well-being taking precedence after he saw the tornado’s path on the Doppler.
Javi picked up the picture frame again, carefully setting it on what remained of a window sill as the voice continued, informing him the owner had no intention of leaving any time soon. He hadn’t expected anyone to follow him, much less try and make conversation when he clearly didn’t want any.
But hell if he didn’t say Tyler Owens was persistent.
“It’ll be nothing but rubble and clothing now. Might be salvageable, might not be. She didn’t seem to care all that much about any of it when she drove off. I guess she was a bit preoccupied after your disagreement,” Tyler said mindlessly as he wandered amongst the rubble behind Javi, kicking away piles of glass and indiscernible debris from the sound of it.
The motel was decimated. The only thing left of the walls were the foundations, outlining the building similar to that of a body in a crime scene.
Tyler would soon follow if he didn’t get to the point.
“What do you want, Owens?” Javi interrupted the start of Tyler’s next ramble, turning to head out of the room and into the next.
This room was noticeably less destroyed than the previous ones he visited, placing it somewhere just outside of the tornado’s path to escape with a graze. Two full-sized beds sat relatively unmoved by the winds, though the sheets and mattresses lay strewn across the frames. Lamps and small trinkets littered the ground, toppled over and smashed against the ground or walls. This room had an intact window that looked ready to shatter into a rain of glass if Javi tapped it. He stayed away from it.
“I want to know what your relationship with Kate is,” Tyler said calmly. Javi wanted to roll his eyes. Of course it was about Kate.
He scoffed bitterly. “There is no relationship.”
Tyler hummed, unconvinced, and it rankled Javi.
He paused in his pawing at a glint in the corner of the room to shoot Tyler a glare over his shoulder. “What?” He asked sharply.
Tyler shook his head noncommittally, sitting on one of the beds. “Nothing, I’m just wondering if you’re telling me the truth.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You have a history of omitting things.”
“I wouldn’t lie about this.”
“Because you care about her.”
Javi pursed his lips and turned away from Tyler, heading out the door. He moved into the next room. At this point, any interest he’d held in sifting through the debris was lost and replaced by the need to simply keep moving now that Tyler had decided to blatantly plant himself in Javi’s space. Seeing nothing worthy of distraction in this room, Javi turned to continue down the row of rooms and promptly jumped in alarm.
His fight or flight instincts went haywire, and it’s a goddamn miracle he didn’t accidentally punch Tyler in the face. Tyler startled in turn, managing to catch Javi’s arm when the latter stumbled back against the doorframe to avoid a face-to-chest collision.
“Sorry,” Tyler offered sheepishly and Javi’s breath heaved. It’d been a shock to his already shot nerves, and the adrenaline straggling through Javi’s veins made him want to scream and cry, and he wasn’t sure which one he was more inclined towards. Resorting to an intermediate, he growled in frustration, ripping his arm out of Tyler’s grip and escaped through the door.
Much to his discomfort, the oppressive shadow followed him again.
“Why ask? You didn’t seem to care before,” Javi tossed out after he calmed down enough to feign nonchalance.
“I didn’t realize how close you two were until now. I thought you were just former co-workers,” Tyler admitted sincerely and Javi raised an incredulous eyebrow at him.
“You didn’t get the message when I threatened you?”
“I was a little distracted at the time.”
“With what?”
Tyler held Javi’s gaze for a moment, something charged passing through his blue-green eyes. A shiver ran down Javi’s spine and he distracted himself by tossing aside the wooden plank in his grip. It clattered, successfully breaking whatever tension had just permeated the air.
“Being pinned against my truck,” Tyler finally answered and Javi’s jaw slackened. Javi might’ve…forgotten those specific details.
He cleared his throat.
“Kate and I were co-workers in a sense. But we were best friends first,” he explained, abandoning the rooms and walking in the street now. To his left, he saw Scott and the rest of StormPAR chatting with the locals. Instead of helping him, he was off wandering with the enemy. “We both went to Muskogee studying meteorology and we just clicked. She always had these fantastic ideas, always wanting to help save the world with science, and I filled in the cracks.”
“Sounds like big dreams for two people.”
“Kate knew how to inspire. It’s how we met the other tornado tamers.”
“Tornado tamers?” Tyler tilted his head curiously.
Javi froze. He hadn't meant to say that.
“Um, our other friends.” Javi moved over to a pile of branches, absently sorting through them with his heart in his throat. It didn’t take him long to find out why.
“I didn’t realize you had other friends, Javi,” Tyler said, and it could’ve been a jab or it could’ve been an honest comment. Javi didn’t care. His mind had already drifted.
A hand shot out from the pile, grabbing his wrist. Blonde hair and big vacant eyes stared up at him, round glasses bent and cracked.
The chains in his head rattled.
“Javi,” her mouth moved but no sound came from it.
“...Javi?” Tyler called.
Javi blinked and Addy was gone. The branches were just branches on the floor, no body, no ghosts.
He stood, feeling unmoored.
Tyler had said, “I didn’t realize you had other friends, Javi,” and all Javi could think was I used to.
There was a sharp intake of breath, almost inaudible, and Javi’s gut filled with terror. He’d said it outloud. He dared a fleeting look Tyler’s way and instantly wished he hadn’t.
Javi had given away too much without meaning to.
Before Tyler could say anything, Javi sped by him, fleeing the scene and to the one refuge he had, work tension be damned. Seeing the white StormPAR cars come into view was a huge relief and if Javi ran the last couple feet spanning them he could chalk it up to being late.
Scott leaned against Scarecrow with his arms crossed. “Thirty minutes, I said. Remember?”
“I know I’m late, I know,” Javi said. He wasted no time reaching past Scott to grab the door handle, tugging on it like an impatient child waiting for their parent to unlock it.
Like an ass, Scott didn’t budge. “Hey, look at me.”
Dammit.
“Scott, can we do this later?” Javi winced at the warble in his voice.
Scott pushed himself off the car, angling towards Javi.
“Javi–” The question died on Scott’s tongue. Something over Javi’s shoulder had his attention. Javi didn’t have to wonder what–who–it was. “What did he say?”
“We were just talking.”
“If you were just talking, then why the hell do you–”
“Scott.” Javi leveled an even stare with his friend. “Can we just go?”
This time Scott moved, letting Javi climb into the safety of the car and shut the door behind him. Javi greeted his teammates in the backseat, going through the motions of buckling up and steadying his breaths. He grabbed Scott’s tablet from the dashboard, looking at the numbers Scott had managed to grab from the locals. They were average, nothing to celebrate over, but any numbers were good numbers to Riggs.
As Scott drove them away from the motel, Kate’s words replayed in Javi’s head.
“He’s swooping in and taking advantage of people who have just lost everything.”
Deep down, Javi knew she was right. He’d always known. He just didn’t want to confront it and now with the reality unveiled and thrown in his face, he found himself stuck. Trapped in a current tearing him in opposite directions.
His hands shook.
🌪🌪🌪
Tyler didn’t say anything to Javi in the morning.
They passed each other on the motel catwalk, up early for different reasons. Nightmares kept Javi up and he didn’t doubt Tyler was on his way to track down their wayward citygirl. It’ll be a few hours drive from the motel to Kate’s house, a fact Javi knew only because they’d practically slept at every motel in the state with the intention of heading home to Mrs. Carter for a barbecue. (Not because he mapped it this morning, wanting to apologize.)
Javi nearly collided with Tyler as the latter exited his room.
They stood in a stand still, neither making a move to make space for the other to slip by. Javi worried at his bottom lip, forcing himself not to shift under Tyler’s gaze. The latter looked like he wanted to say something, lips parting, and Javi didn’t know what was worse: that Javi didn’t want to hear it or that he wanted Tyler to just throw it out there so they could move past it.
In the end, Tyler stayed silent.
Giving Javi a chivalrous nod, he stepped aside to make room on the catwalk. Relief was a cruel thing sometimes. Now Javi wouldn’t know if Tyler was perseverating over their conversation, letting it color his opinion of Javi.
Suddenly, Javi was exhausted.
🌪🌪🌪
Kate texted Javi the next day.
Their text chain was small, consisting of the article and voice message he’d sent back in New York and her response detailing her flight itinerary. Any texts from before were gone, deleted in a drunken stupor years ago when Javi couldn’t handle seeing the string of unanswered texts filling the chat.
The message was small, a simple “come to my house.”
Scott offered to drive him, insisting when Javi turned it down.
Javi spent the car ride staring out the window, worrying at his bottom lip. Apprehension filled his every pore and he feared what the future held for him and Kate. Would they go back to radio silence? No texts, no calls, no talking?
Pulling up to Kate’s house, all that apprehension shriveled up and died at the sight of Tyler walking out after her, hands on his hips and looking like he had more of a right to be at the house than Javi did…and it looked like Tyler stayed the night.
Unbelievable.
She met him less than a week ago.
She’d known Javi since college.
Noticing Javi’s attention had yet to focus on her, Kate turned back to the house. Tyler went back inside without a word.
Whatever, it didn’t matter.
None of it did. Kate didn’t belong to him and she could hang out with whoever she wanted. He didn’t care.
(God he cared.)
He handed over the PAR data, fully aware he was breaching company confidential laws by doing so. But she’d always made him act irrationally.
“I want to help people too, Kate, I really do,” Javi explained, voice threatening to break under the grief. “I said what I said because I carry that guilt with me too. Every single day of my life, so…I’m sorry.”
He omitted the facts of the EF-5’s aftermath.
She didn’t need to hear it.
She didn’t need to hear how Javi spent the next two days as part of the search party. She didn’t need to hear how he found the bodies of two of their three friends: Addy’s crushed under wood, gaze hollow and skin pale against her brightly colored clothes, Jeb miles and miles away, body twisted over what remained of a farm’s fence. Javi heard about Praveen from a distraught mother, how her son had been found in a ravine. There weren’t enough words to convey his apologies to her and she’d been helpless to do anything but cry in his arms all while Javi knew she was thinking why Javi had survived but not her baby boy.
Kate didn’t deserve to have it weigh on her shoulders.
It was Javi’s burden to bear.
Kate stepped closer, bridging the distance to him. Her face was soft, the hurt from before melting away in the face of his apology. This close, Javi could see the faint freckles sprinkled across her cheeks that years of storm chasing and farm work painted onto her skin despite her protests that he was just seeing things.
His fingers itched to reach out and count them.
Instead, he clenched his fists at his side.
“Javi, why don’t you stay and help us?” She asked so earnestly that it startled him. He hated the way his heart stuttered, hope sparking. “We could finally solve this together.”
Together…her and him, like it was supposed to be.
The chuckle that tore from his throat was raspy and a little self-deprecating.
He’d give anything for that to be true.
Javi could see Tyler lurking by the living room window, and he smothered his hope like a flame. Kate didn’t need him anymore. She had someone new by her side. Someone who wasn’t a walking reminder of what she’d lost, because that’s what he was, right? That’s why she kept leaving him behind, and if push came to shove, he couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t do it again.
So this was his choice.
She could move on and complete her dream. But it wouldn’t be with Javi by her side. He had StormPAR now to worry about.
“You know,” he started, staring into her big brown eyes. “There was a time when I’d do anything for you, Kate.”
(He still would.)
She shifted, regarding him with muted surprise as the puzzle pieces clicked in her mind. For the first time ever, he couldn’t stand to be at the center of her attention, dissecting him in a way he’d never been dissected before.
Scott’s impatience saved him from any more embarrassment, calling him to the storm brewing in the distance.
To the team that needed him.
“Be careful out there, Kate.”
🌪🌪🌪
Javi’s heart stopped at the sight of Kate charging towards the tornado.
The sheer size of the monstrosity dwarfed the red truck and its yellow barrels, tendrils of wind lashing and snapping at the anticipation of lifting Kate into its grip. He wanted to yell, to chase out after her even as Boone helped him heave the doors shut, playing tug of war with the tornado’s strength.
He knew this would happen, called it the moment he tossed Scott out of the truck and sped off towards El Reno after Kate. She was leaving, again.
But this time he knew she didn’t have a choice.
Tyler clung to the wall, shell-shocked and no amount of Boone shaking him seemed to get him to snap out of it. He was grieving and Javi couldn’t let him, not yet. They didn’t have much time before the tornado was on them and their only chance of surviving this, however miniscule, was to get everyone into the back of the theater.
He couldn’t do it alone.
Javi needed Tyler.
“Come on, T,” Boone said, pulling at Tyler’s arm to get the man to let go of the wall, to take a step, to do anything but stand there and let the tornado take him. Swallowing down his pride, Javi shook out his hands before darting forward, grabbing Tyler by the shoulders and getting right into his eyeline. This way, he couldn’t be ignored.
“Tyler!” Javi called, and the foreignness of Tyler’s first name coming out his mouth was enough to get Tyler’s eyes to focus on him. “We gotta help get these people to the back of the theater and I can’t do it without you, so I need you to help me!” Blue eyes blinked rapidly, shifting between Javi and the sounds of the building groaning around them.
Bricks ground against each other and metal bent. Something slammed into the building and the three of them stumbled. Javi’s hands slipped from Tyler’s shoulder’s when the latter fell forward into his chest and he snagged Boone before the third could hit the ground. People screamed back in the theater and Javi could only imagine the worst. When the shakes ended, he released Boone, who quickly peeked to take stock of the theater.
Tyler was drenched by their little slip and slide with the water tower but his skin burned through their wet clothes. Javi grabbed Tyler’s shoulders again, hesitating to push him away.
Javi had one more shot before he had to leave Tyler too.
“Please, help me,” he pleaded in Tyler’s ear, squeezing Tyler once before he pulled back and ran off towards the theater just as Boone came tumbling back into the room. Javi didn’t have time to wait around to see if he’d gotten through to Tyler. He just hoped he did enough so Boone could finish it.
🌪🌪🌪
TYLER POV
Tyler couldn’t breathe.
Kate was warm, alive, breathing as she beamed at him. Banged up and a little hysterical with relief and joy, but here, solid and whole.
And yet, he still couldn’t breathe. But then suddenly--
“I always knew you were crazy, StormPAR!” Dani hollered, tackling Javi into a bearhug that sent them crashing to the ground in a heap. She shook him around a few times for good measure before squeezing the life out of him. Drunk off their shared giddiness of having tamed a tornado and survived, Javi couldn’t stop smiling, bright and contagious as his laughter cracked through the air like thunder. Show-stopping and wild.
--Tyler could.
He recalled the moment Javi appeared in El Reno with perfect clarity.
Tyler had been frantic, trapped under a wooden beam with the water tower slowly toppling down on them. He shouted at Kate to leave him and get to the movie theater, resigned with the fact that his story ended here. She ignored him, laser focused on trying to futilely lift the beam off of his leg, and Tyler felt the foreboding horror that it didn’t matter that she was meant for greater things because her story was about to end with his.
Even with all their brains combined, neither of them had factored in the possibility of a third variable.
Javi.
Tyler knew there was nothing Javi cared more about than StormPAR. It’s what made Javi predictable, a shape that fit into its perfect mold. Tyler didn’t need to wonder where Javi’s loyalties were because he already knew.
At least, that’s what he’d thought, because right here, right now Javi was a walking contradiction. Not only had he chosen to follow Kate to help the townspeople rather than ignore them, he’d chosen to put himself back into the line of danger after scarcely escaping it mere moments before. The afterimages of a familiar white truck flipped onto its side while an inferno rushed toward it flashed in front of Tyler’s eyes before Javi’s met his across the huddle.
Tyler’s breath caught just as it always did when those green eyes found him. Just like they had back in the crumbling theater.
Silence fell, seconds trickling into minutes and what felt like hours. There were no hardened gazes or sharp looks. Just a mutual understanding. Tyler didn’t know which one of them started first. One moment they’re staring at each other with bated breaths, and the next they’re bursting into peals of laughter. It was utterly ridiculous and enchantingly perfect. Tyler reached over to wrap an arm around Javi’s shoulder, tugging the shorter man into his side, both of them grinning down at Kate.
They probably looked crazy, laying in the middle of a warzone with Tyler’s battered truck upturned behind them and the remnants of grain silos and broken grass surrounding them.
But with Kate in his arms and Javi laughing at his side, Tyler couldn’t care less.
Because he’d never been so scared to lose everything.