A bolt of lightning flashed across the sky, illuminating the dark room briefly.
Ray counted off the seconds under his breath, "One. Two. Three. Four…"
A peal of thunder roared through the air as he hit ten. The lightning then, must have struck, what, two or three miles away? It wasn't any closer than it'd been ten minutes ago. He let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
He watched the dark sky, his view blurred by light rain. The silence was broken two minutes later by the muffled footsteps of his housemates heading downstairs to the Danger Room. They were right outside, but to Ray, they might as well have been on the other side of the world.
The first knuckle of his left middle finger suddenly prickled. He scratched at it, almost hard enough to break the skin.
Another bolt of lightning streaked across the sky. Ray's skin tingled. He forgot to count off the seconds till the thunder. He was trying to imprint the image of the lightning into his mind.
He'd felt the storm coming half an hour before it arrived, and he'd known exactly when the first flash of lightning would hit. The slight charge in the air made the skin of his entire body tingle, but it was sharper in his hands. He kept them moving: cracking knuckles, bending fingers back as far as they comfortably could, nails etching half-moons into the meat of his palm.
The sky lit up again. Ray watched the lightning branch apart like a crack in the air, but it was over much too soon.
He wanted to be outside. He could generate his own electricity and he could take it from appliances, but he wanted to be standing outside - with nothing between him and the tempest - and snatch lightning from the sky itself.
The thought of it made a small electric current dance across the fingers of his right hand. He clamped them down with his left.
Rain suddenly came down in sheets. Gushing across the windows, it blurred his view of the sky completely - reminding him why he couldn't go outside. The curtain of water made the next bolt of lightning look wobbly. Ray imagined being outside, grabbing the fork of pure light like a cheap knockoff of some ancient god. Then, unbidden, he imagined the water that would inevitably drench his clothes and his skin, redirecting the electricity inward, further inside than it should go, striking into his bones. The thought made him flinch.
Ray had heard of storms without rain, just the thunder and lightning. He had yet to see one.
As thunder cracked through the air, he didn't hear someone come in.
"Hey," came Roberto's voice, distantly. "Hey! What the hell are you doing?"
Ray was going to tell him to mind his own business, but it took him a moment too long to tear his eyes away from the window. Without waiting for an answer, Roberto went on, "We've got Danger Room, remember? Everyone's waiting on you."
Another streak of lightning, and Ray turned towards the window again.
"What's wrong with you?" Roberto sighed in exasperation. "Come on, you're gonna get in trouble with Professor Logan again."
Ray wanted to ask why he cared. He didn't. Instead, he followed Roberto wordlessly down the hall and into the elevator to the basement complex, all the while ignoring the looks Roberto kept giving him. Finally, it got on his nerves.
"I'm fine," he said roughly, looking the other boy straight in the eye.
Roberto didn't make a snarky comment, didn't roll his eyes or make any kind of face at all.
"All right," he said.
He didn't say anything after that, didn't give Ray any more worried looks. His expression was unreadable, but Ray didn't dwell it. His mind was still with the storm outside, the rumble of thunder and flash of lightning. The soundproofed, windowless world down here felt too flat without them.
He was still thinking about it when they walked into the Danger Room.
If he fought harder than usual that day, going all out and not holding back, no one said anything about it.
A/N: I wrote this a while back, just dug it out and polished it up today. It's published as its own story because I don't think it fits with the vibe of the rest of my Kiddie Table ficlets.
Thanks for reading.