the weather follows no masters
It was a dark and stormy night. The sounds of frightened Armu calves lowing for their mothers could be heard through the wooden, slatted walls of the manor's upper floors, and the wind itself seemed to stretch and crawl through the branches of the surrounding trees lit with the smoulder of curious rotting leaves that, themselves, crackled and rent in the weather. The moor rolled and roiled, discontent but not malcontent, for precipitation was natural, in most temperate climes.
Sorry, let me try that again.
"It was a dark and stormy night."
Minoth rolled his eyes and grasped impatiently at the back of his gauntlet as he said it. "It can't be a cliché if you've lived through it, now can it? Either that or everything's a cliché."
"I vote for everything, and celebration nonetheless," Flora said, giving him a conciliatory pat on his cheek as she cavalierly stepped over his bowing legs to get into bed. She, lacking armor of which to divest herself, needed to do no more than trade her day dress for a clean nighttime variety, which she had done quite fluidly before brushing her teeth, patting cleanser on her face, and taking down her hair.
Minoth hadn't said so, but part of the reason he was taking so much longer to get ready for bed was that he'd likely been undecided on whether or not he'd actually stay with the Origos that night; some hogwash about imposition and inconvenience, for them and him alternately, had trotted its way out in his mind, and he'd watched Addam stretch and groan with a wistful look that had earned him a disapproving, pursed one from Flora in return.
You know you feel better in a way you can't even begin to describe when you're with him, the look had said, and had also discounted entirely Flora's almost magical soul-healing role in the whole affair.
Addam, patting absently at his pillow, didn't so much as flinch when a spline of lightning lanced through the air outside, lighting up the master room far brighter than it had any right to when they'd already an ether lamp on, and when, more importantly, thunder rumbled in after it to angrily assert that there would be no peace, tonight.
Minoth, meanwhile, jumped, giving an aborted attempt at jamming his ears shut from without.
"Are you alright, Minoth?"
The Flesh Eater grimaced. "Peachy."
A beat of silence - absolute, not begrudged - slid by.
"Can't stand that stuff."
"No?" Addam said, with all the nonchalance of a man turning pages of a magazine. "It reminds me of you. I always thought you'd loved storms."
"Not in the middle of the night, I don't. Not when it's a surprise."
"But you're not alone," Flora pointed out, far too deftly for Minoth's tastes. "If you're anything like me, which I know you are, you won't mind it when you're not alone."
"Yeah, yeah. See how you like it when it's three and a half hours past and you realize it's incessant."
Three and a half hours passed by without incident, the storm courting the sea more than the sleepers and keeping its outbursts minimally invasive. Addam, with his arms pulling Flora to his chest and his hands sneakily holding Minoth's, was already tidily managing a gentle snore; Minoth quickly did the spatial math and realized that there was no winning - either his back would be to the human's vibrations, or his hands would be monopolized. Addam Origo didn't sleep alone unless he was alone. They couldn't have been more different.
At four hours past midnight, however, the sky opened, and the dragon's head seemed to spit fire directly aimed at Aletta's keep. Minoth's eyes, swimming with darkness and other assorted floaters, saw the rug on the floor jump, and gain a graceful lump of a curl thereafter. Or, he was just imagining it. Mark another for clichés.
The room flashed. Minoth grit his teeth.
Here it came. The thunder would clap, and then the rain's driving drivel would become all the more woefully apparent and impossible to shut out, and he'd get no more sleep for two hours, because you couldn't fall asleep any faster than that with your wrists bending positively unhealthy angles to shove pillows' corners atop your ears, if not attemptedly in.
His hands were still trapped, however. Flora's back pulsed with her breathing, steady and warm, in a cool way, against his chest and Core. Her hands were never sweaty, never overwhelming, when he held them. And though he'd never admit - not for years, yet, if then - he did indeed like, so much, to hold them.
Concentrated on that blissful sensation, Minoth didn't even notice when the thunder resolved its asynchronous promise with its faster partner. Nor did he the next time it came, nor the next. His realization of the event was always posthumous, if he was even awake for more than one or two more.
Certainly, it wasn't the lightning he minded. And the thunder was...as much earth as wind, like the grounding presences of Hugo and Haze. Of course, when you're alone, all you can focus on is the masterless storm, echoing your own internal inquiescence. If you've loved ones to hand, however, it becomes the furthest, most backdropped thing to and from your mind.
Huh. So, Addam had been right. Not that a man who snored like that, and usually worse, had any apparent stake in the game, but regardless, he had, in fact, been right.
(Well, Flora had been right, rather. It was just that Addam's had been the more purchaseless, blindly trusting guess of intuition. And what a beautiful thing.)
If he tried to bring it up the following morning, though, Minoth resolved to give him nothing but grouse.