There's a storm outside.

It's early morning, and there's a storm outside. Which isn't common, not in these parts, but hey, sometimes weird shit happens.

Adam yawns and turns over in his bed.

Thunder outside, that must have been what woke him up. Damn sensitive ears. He's always been a light sleeper.

The thunder booms again, and he glances up from his pillow. Rain pounds the glass of the window mercilessly, endlessly, and the sky is a dark gray.

Adam stares. That's quite menacing, he thinks, and it's mildly funny for a couple of seconds, until it's not, and he rolls over and goes back to sleep.

There's a ringing sound.

Cell. Must be. Who would call at this hour? Who would call when there's apparently a goddamn hurricane outside, because when Adam sits up blearily and casts his blurry sight to the window, it seems like the storm has somehow gotten even worse. If that's possible.

Lightning streaks across the sky.

He squints.

Ringing. Oh, right. The phone.

It's on the bedside table, right next to his alarm clock, which reads…late. He's late. He overslept. And the person calling him…

Iverson.

Adam stares at the device in his hand, at the name on the screen. He should answer it. He should answer it and make up an excuse, say the storm interfered with his signal, say he got sick from the draft, say anything. That's what the little voice in his head is telling him, the voice that always sounds so achingly familiar, but he's not going to think about that right now.

He silences his phone.

It's too depressing outside to be yelled at. Iverson's lecture and his own excuses will just have to wait, at least until after breakfast.

He silences the little voice, too.

There's a quiet conversation in the living room.

Faint words drifting through the air, floating towards him. Somber, cold voices, professionally sympathetic.

TV. Must've left it on last night.

He shuffles to the kitchen and grabs an apple from the bowl, the first thing he sees. It's juicy and wakes him up a little bit, which he supposes is a good thing.

Sometimes being awake is hard.

Sometimes being awake means being alone.

Sometimes it's your own fault that you're alone and you have no one to blame but yourself.

Adam munches on his apple and stares blankly at his cabinet and imagines a reality in which he understands his own feelings. It's a lovely fantasy.

"…Takashi Shirogane…"

He whips his head around.

There's a white noise in his ears.

And hurt in his ribs.

And something very cold and very heavy sinking in his stomach, and he's covered in sweat, and he's somehow on his knees.

And the TV is flickering images of three faces. And the TV is flickering those images one by one. And the TV is flickering to an image of a face that Adam sees in his dreams and nowhere else, a face he's pushed very far away from him, and he leans forward with a blank mind and his fingers press against the screen.

And the TV speaks the words again, "missing in action, presumed dead."

And the phone is ringing behind him, again, and outside the thunder cracks and shakes the walls, and Adam feels his body crumple fully to the floor. He curls in on himself and crushes his head in between his elbows, like that will stop this. Like if he only holds himself and mumbles gibberish this reality will fade away.

Like if he'd only let himself cry sooner, he could have stopped this from happening. If he'd figured out what he was feeling. If he'd realized what he wanted, because now, of course it's now that he knows, instantly, like he'd known it all his life, like it was a fact as obvious as the sky being blue. It's a punishment, somehow, he knows it is.

Maybe if you'd tried harder, the little voice whispers.

Hot tears are on his face. "Maybe," he whispers back.

He knows it's not enough.

Author's Note: The SDCC panel f**ked me up, man.

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