Thunderstorms
There has always been something so fascinating about a thunderstorm.
Even as a very small child, the appeal of her pretty dolls and pretty frocks couldn't hold up against the pull of that growly sound from the sky and the rain beating wildly against the window. The toys would always be abandoned in the middle of the floor, and she would be scolded, but not care because she was still flushed with elation from the storm and the cool fresh clean smell of the world when she was finally allowed to have the window open.
Earlier this evening, when she heard the distant rumble of thunder, she was at the window of the slightly big bedroom that she claimed for her and Zuko.
Kneeling in the shabby brown wing chair before the window and eagerly awaiting the next dazzling display of lightning to briefly illuminate the sky pitch-dark with night and heavy grey clouds. Impulsively, throwing the window open to let in the strong wind and the rain and the scent of the night and the storm.
Now the storm has persisted for nearly an hour, and not everyone shares her interest in staring avidly out into the rain.
When he approaches, she does not hear his light footfalls; does not see the bobbing flickering circle of pale watery light from the only candle he could find.
After a moment of watching with crossed arms and amused smile, he reaches for her, and she jumps slightly and muffles a startled cry at his light touch on her shoulder.
"I wondered where you'd gotten off to." His voice is gently exasperated, with a warm smile apparent in it. His eyes drop to the silky red robe knotted loosely, flicker back up again to damp hair, and flushed cheeks before she has time to do more than duck her head sheepishly with a slight grin.
"Sorry. I wanted to watch the storm."
He raises one eyebrow curiously.
"When did you become an aspiring meteorologist?"
The faint pink flush in her cheeks, even in the small room illuminated only by the dim light of the candle and the occasional day-bright flash of lightning, catches his eye.
"I've always liked watching lightning storms," she replies with a shrug of slightly forced casualness. "When I was little, it never occurred to me that I shouldn't be outside during one – for a better look, you know – until I got scolded once when I was five."
He laughs softly, oddly charmed by the image of a tiny child with her soft hair and golden eyes, staring fascinated at the falling rain and the dazzle of lightning flashes splitting the sky, utterly unheeding her pretty hair becoming utterly drenched.
Half annoyed and half-delighted that she has made him laugh, she continues.
"There's just something I love about the rain and the noise and the lightning. I almost can't help watching a storm when one comes up."
"I don't suppose you've noticed, with all your storm-watching, but the power's gone out," he tells her a little sourly, in time with the frantic beat of the rain on the windowpane and a rumble of thunder not as far off as before.
She reaches for the candle he is carrying.
"You should put that down somewhere; the last thing we need is the place to catch fire with all of these firebenders around us."
He stares in brief astonishment as she tugs it from his hand and slides it onto the nearby dresser. By the time, he has formed a comment; she is kneeling in the chair before the window again, and staring out into the driving rain.
After he has watched her for a while, in slightly annoyed surprise at being so entirely ignored in favor of her silly hobby of watching rain, he moves closer behind her. She stiffens a bit as he rests one knee on the chair between hers and braces himself with one hand on either armrest.
"I'll watch with you," he tells her amiably, very close to the back of her ear. "It's certainly more interesting than sitting alone in a dark room, waiting for the power."
Shivering slightly at his arms nearly around her, she nods briefly.
"Right."
Time passes in silence between them, a silence finally broken by a crack of thunder that follows very quickly a streak of lightning that seems to hang suspended for several seconds. The corners of the room bare but for the pieces of furniture she found are illuminated with this bright, cold, vibrant, almost otherworldly light.
"It's getting closer," he points out quietly after both have caught their breath.
She nods slightly, wondering at the slight tremble in her hands where they rest on the windowsill. It is awfully like fear, this sensation that she will go to pieces if shaken too violently, but she has never been afraid of a storm before.
She wonders if it is the crash, struggle, and driving rain outside the window making her pulse beat madly like this and her breath quicken, or if it is his heat and presence around her and his breath stirring her hair as his chest brushes lightly against her back and his arms rest against hers.
Probably both.
She strongly doubts that it is neither.
A quick glance over her shoulder at him, and she catches her breath.
Through the wildly flickering and dancing play of light and shadow over his face, she can see something in the quirk of his mouth that she thinks she recognizes from another young man's smile, a long time ago, before he was exiled, and he became really the only man in her life.
Almost before she is aware of it, she has twisted about to face him, hand bunching at his shirtfront to pull him closer, kissing him with all the feverish intensity of the storm outside; of a woman who has not had this in far too long.
Impossibly, he is kissing her in return, hands sliding silkily over her spine to rest at her hip and the base of her neck; kissing her with all the familiarity and sureness of years that they have never spent together this way; kissing her, and leading her from the window.
The scent of the storm follows them after the breeze cannot, and she remains aware of it even as her robe slides effortlessly open, a silky red, like a maroon, rippling beneath her.
He carefully braces himself against the mattress beneath his hands when he leans over her,
Another, longer, flash of lightning hangs in the sky for several seconds. Strange shadows spring up in the room and dance and flicker over her skin and over his, when they hold tightly to all that is real now. Unheeding of shadows or light or even the scent of the rain, or of anything outside of heat and sweat-damp hair and the sheets tangled around their legs and tangling them more irreversibly together.
It is over nearly as soon as it begins, and begins and ends again and again, before either is aware that the storm has ended long ago, because it's been far too long since he had this, too.
There's no point in fruitless worry about whether or not this means anything to him outside of a convenient release of tension, or whether it means anything more to her when she really thinks about it. Now that it has happened once, and the sky did not fall down or the earth split to swallow them up for the sin of shattered professionalism, it will likely happen again when one or both of them need it very badly.
And maybe even when they don't need it terribly badly, but would just rather be together than alone.
Small comfort, the warmth of a human hand and the sound of a human voice in place of the dark oppression of solitude late at night when she begins to worry that there is really no way they can stay hidden like this much longer, and that their sins will have to catch them out sooner or later. Small comfort, because he does not see the matter the way she does, and is more likely to become angry than sympathize when she timidly approaches the matter of her fears of discovery and punishment. But a small comfort that she thinks she might very well need far more than physical release that will be his motivation to come to her this way again.
As they lay tangled together after, neither willing to move quite yet, the scent of the rain and the wind and the night reaches her. She smiles against his shoulder and wraps one arm more snugly around his neck as he kisses her forehead lightly.
There has always been something so fascinating about a thunderstorm.