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The weather had been rotten all week. Unyielding storms rumbled through the bleary English skies blanketing Durdam Lane. Much to Tord's dismay, the forecast made no promise of it letting up soon.
He’d never openly admitted this to anyone else, but Tord had a weird thing with lightning.
The thing was, lightning didn’t care about walls. It was entirely indifferent to manmade barriers, and powerful enough to strike wherever it wished.
The chances of becoming its next target were slim, but not impossible.
To him, it was something akin to nature's sick spin on Russian roulette. Everyone under the absent sun was a player— Unwilling and unfairly unequipped with any way to stop its aim.
In his head, heaven cocked a gun with few empty chambers– striking down with loud declarations that someone, something, out there had lost the next round.
True victory was found in the former as heaven collected the grand prize of raking losers up to their new airy abode.
Normally, he could manage masking his uneasiness during the occasional downpour. This time around, the excessive bout of bad weather was taking a real toll on his sleep. It had taken a liking to working itself up mostly during the night, and left him tossing and turning through the cruel cacophony of celestial cymbals accosting him like an unwelcomed orchestra.
His schedule had been just as unrelenting. The only available windows of time were mere slivers- insufficiently wide enough for him to slip through and exit the waking world.
By the fourth night, it was safe to say he was thoroughly wiped.
12am and he stumbled to the kitchen on a quest to fetch some water to wash down the melatonin tablets already dissolving on his tongue. Another fruitless endeavor failing to aid his pursuit for just one night of uninterrupted peace.
He shuffled his way back down the hall with glass in hand. His mind was unable to focus on anything except keeping count of the seconds between the flashes and the following thunderclaps to gauge how far away the dreaded threat fell.
Flash…. Four…. Clap.
Flash….. Five….. Boom.
Flash… Three… Crackle.
Too close for comfort.
Tom, en route to the kitchen himself, passed him by and quickly took notice of how Tord barely even seemed to register his presence.
Flash. One. Crash.
Tord flinched, sucking in air through his teeth as the cup fell through his feeble fingers.
He was too tired to care about the mess pooled beneath his soggy socks. Tord simply stood there, eyes shut as he drew out a long, defeated sigh.
“Youuu okay there?”
Tom couldn’t help but feel sorry seeing how out of it he was. The sound of his voice making his presence known didn't startle Tord one bit. His mind was still too busy keeping count.
“Jus’tired,” he mumbled, anvils pulling at his eyelids.
“Can’t sleep?”
“Duh,” he shot back with what little snark he could muster.
It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together.
“The storm keeping you up?”
Flash.. Two.. Clash.
Tord winced with a grimace, eyes flashing open briefly before miserably fluttering in an attempt to keep open.
“Yeah,” he finally admitted, his tone a quiet blend of exhaustion and embarrassment.
Taking pity, Tom took a hold of his bicep and led him back to his room.
“C’mon.”
“Whatter you doin’?” he asked, lumbering in tow.
“Just trust me.”
And so, Tord was led back to bed. He figured that'd be the end of his offered assistance– that is, until Tom walked around and slid beneath the sheets.
Flash. One. Rumble.
The small jolt of adrenaline lent by the strike gave him just enough energy to speak through the fog.
"Wassa'big idea, Tom?"
“Gonna need you to trust me a liiiittle bit more right now...” Tom slid closer, turning to face him and wrapped an arm around his torso. He pressed his chest against Tord’s side and held him close. His thumb stroked at his ribcage comfortingly as he started speaking his plan into action.
“Y’know… when I was a kid, I was scared of storms, too. Freaked the hell out of me. We had this russell terrier though, her name was Sadie–”
Tom kept on with a soft and soothing cadence, deliberately making his voice and movements as calming as he could to lull the lingering fear from the front of Tord’s mind. He hoped the extra details would serve as some kind of quasi-bedtime story.
“My parents never let Sadie up on our furniture, but I’d sneaaak her in my room whenever the weather got like this. We’d hiiide under my duveeeet and we’d snuggle. Just feeling her breathing all calm and even next to me- It got me to calm down, too. She was soo sweet.”
Tord gave a breathy hum of acknowledgement letting him know he was listening, his head lolling and falling against Tom’s shoulder.
The gradual weight of his increasingly limp head assured Tom it was working, and he continued.
“It kinda sucked when she got older, though. I had to start picking between the storm outside or the storm she'd fart up next to me. I started calling her Dutchie from all the times she'd, y'know, give me a Dutch oven. But that's prolly my own fault for sneaking her old ass broccoli under the dinner table- heheh."
Flash.. Two.. Crash.
“Fuck-” Tord gasped and jolted back, eyes back to the ceiling. His lids hung halfway open, still feeling the need to monitor the flashes.
“Tord…” Tom pulled him back in. “C’mere.”
His rag-doll of a roommate acquiesced, turning towards Tom and draped an arm around him.
“Relaaax-”
Tom threaded his other arm under and around his back to brush it with light caresses. The hand on Tord’s ribs sliding up to bring his head into his chest.
"Nothing's gonna hurt you," he promised. “Just focus on my breathing.”
Tord took a deep breath, willing himself to exhale whatever nerves he could and followed his advice. Tom stroked his fingers through his hair- pads dragging past caramel plains down to his nape and back again to repeat the soothing strokes.
He switched directions eventually, running his fingers up his nape and stopping halfway up to softly scrunch and lightly pull through the locks encircled in his lowering palm. He kept Tord close to the steady metronome of his heartbeat, and felt the way his breathing began to fall in time with it.
The subdued sound of a soft staccatoed thrum purled in Tord's throat as Tom washed his worries away in a shower of tender attention.
“Theeere you go...You’re okay now...You're okay.”
Beneath the sheets, a calming current coursed between them.
Electric yet gentle. Elemental ease in embracing extremities.
A sense of safety sparked from softly beating hearths.
A warm welcome found from a home can they hold.
Four cold walls- they could never compare to the way this shelter shields.
“Shhhh….Shhhh.”
Flash….Crack.
No more need for keeping count.
Tom buried his face into his hair, warm exhales fanning through Tord's somnolent scalp. The rise and fall of their chests- now in steady sync.
The vestigial instinct to hold and be held through the storm brought Tom a familiar comfort. One he hadn’t realized until now just how much he missed.
“S’nice...” Tord confessed as he lay languid in his arms.
“Good, Tord,” he smiled. “Get some rest now for me, okay?”
“Okay-” he replied, his voice uncharacteristically small and soft as he drifted off. “...Thank you, Tom...”
He was too far gone from the waking world now to feel the way his defenseless demeanor made Tom’s metronome falter. It made him never want to stop guarding the trust that he'd been gifted. It felt like a precious, fragile keepsake he hoped to carefully cradle many more nights ahead.
The spark Tom felt was one that inspired anything but fear.
The exact opposite, actually.
He sighed out one last reassurance as sleep came to envelop him as well...
“I’ve got you...”
It was the best sleep they both had in a very long time.