Title: The Silence of Storms
Pairing: Helga/Arnold
Rating: PG-13 (language, kissing)
Disclaimer: This is non-profitable fan work. No copyright infringement intended.
Author's Note: Written for Shortaki Week Day 4, for the prompt "storm." Happy reading!
the silence of storms
"Get back here, Helga!"
"Bite me!" Helga shouted over her shoulder as she bolted for the entryway. She stopped just long enough to step into her boots, and then she was throwing open the door and dashing outside until the shouts of her parents became mere whispers, muffled by distance and the rush of the wind.
Fury carried her far longer than her lackluster physical endurance could have; kept her running even as the burn in her legs grew from a candle flame to an inferno and her lungs felt to be twisting in her chest. When she finally did stop it was because her body had been pushed to its limits. Helga fell, knees giving out until they were striking the ground, and even that was too much for them. They continued to buckle until she was lying prone, face in the dirt before she willed herself to roll onto her back.
Helga took stock of her surroundings as she sucked in deep mouthfuls of air. She was lying on damp grass, felt the tips of the blades poke at her skin and tickle the palms of her hands. At the periphery of her vision she could just make out the tall silhouette of trees, dark against a darker backdrop, and further, the vague outline of a gate surrounding them. She was in a park, she realized—Hope Park, given the distorted shadow of the heptagonal play dome in the distance—which meant she'd just run four miles nonstop. Just to get away from her parents. She would have laughed if it weren't so depressing.
Thinking of her parents had her lips twisting, and she glared up at the moiling sky—dark but for the occasional flash of bright light at the edges of the clouds—feeling the backs of her eyes burn.
"I hate them," she whispered, pressing her palms to her lids. "I hate them so much."
Helga thought she'd lost the battle with herself when she felt something cold and wet and damnable slide down her cheek. Seeds of self-hatred sprouted roots in her chest until she felt another cold, wet something near her hairline, and then another, this time on her arm. Startled, she opened her eyes, only to rapidly shut them again when the clouds split apart and released a deluge of rain.
She swore loudly, rain like pinpricks against her skin as she pushed herself to her aching feet. She was caught in a downpour—around her the world had become a blur, once-distinct shapes distorting from behind a veil of cascading rain until she could see little else but what was directly in front of her.
Helga cupped her hands above her eyes, little good it did, and jogged in the direction she'd just come from, grimacing at the way her sockless feet squelched with every step and her dress clung uncomfortably to her skin. She felt an incomprehensible urge to laugh—it was just her friggin' luck that she'd get caught in a storm when she was miles away from home without an umbrella, money, or phone—but shoved it down. The threatening rumble of thunder overhead sapped the last vestiges of humor within her, and in its place grew a wariness that prompted her aching legs to move.
Another rumble of thunder, followed by a flash of lightning so bright dots danced before her vision, and Helga would be lying if she said she wasn't a teeny, tiny bit scared. She hated storms—had since her parents had lost her at a park on Grant Island during the worst thunderstorm of '91 when she was four. There was nothing quite like being stranded in an unfamiliar place while lightning threatened overhead to scar a kid for life.
Soggy ground gave way to wet pavement as Helga breached the limits of the park. She travelled to the edge of the block and had to squint to make out the blurred letters of the street sign.
Honestly, it was a miracle she managed to get here at all; Helga could count the number of times she'd walked from her place to Hope Park on one hand and still have four fingers leftover. The route was a vague memory, one she didn't trust but had no choice but to rely on because there was no one else around. It was eerie as hell, and Helga had to wonder if the news station had issued a storm warning without her realizing it.
With her luck, it probably had.
She walked, body tense and growing tenser as lightning and thunder wreaked havoc above. She could barely hear herself think over the crackle of the sky, the whistle of the wind, and the drum of the rain as it beat mercilessly against the earth. Perhaps that was a good thing, though, considering everything. It wasn't as if she had anything nice to think about.
She reached the edge of the block, looked both ways, then dashed across the street. Sidled up as close to the storefronts as she could get in an attempt to shield herself under their awnings. Reached another end, and was in the process of rounding the corner when the sound of someone calling her name reached her ears and she spun around.
There was someone across the street and they were heading towards her.
She couldn't make out who it was, only that they weren't carrying an umbrella. She inched to the edge of the street, squinting to see through the heavy rain, but couldn't. It was too dark, and the rain was too thick. So she waited, arms crossed to fend off the chill, as the person approached.
When they finally came close enough that she could make out familiar features, she wished she hadn't waited.
"What the hell are you doing here, football head?" she asked, ignoring the way her heart somersaulted with the practice of someone who'd been ignoring such things for years.
"Hi, Helga," Arnold greeted her. He was as soaked as she was, though looked decidedly less miserable about it. "And I'm out on a walk, obviously. You?"
Helga spluttered. "On a walk? In this weather?" She spread out her arms, gesturing to the friggin' storm that was raging around them.
"It's the perfect weather for a walk," Arnold insisted. At the look she gave him he added, "I like storms."
"You like—no, you know what? I don't even care. You're crazy, I established that years ago so I have no idea why this even surprises me. It's just my friggin' luck that the one recognizable person I bump into isn't even carrying an umbrella. I bet that was intentional too, wasn't it?"
Arnold sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck, and Helga bit back the scream of frustration that tried clawing its way up her throat. She forced herself to count to ten. It's not his fault, she reminded herself firmly, turning her back on him just in case her temper got the better of her and she ended up pummeling him after all. You're the idiot who ran out of the house without money or a cellphone. It's not his job to save you from your shitty life choices.
Helga took a deep, fortifying breath, gathered what remained of her broken equanimity, and started to walk. She wasn't surprised in the least when Arnold fell into step beside her.
"So," Arnold started, "you never did say what you were doing out here. I'm guessing it's not because you thought it a good time to go for a walk, though."
"Good guess," Helga said sarcastically.
"Well?" Arnold prompted, undeterred.
It's none of your business, she wanted to say, but she held back the words. Helga wasn't what anyone sane would call nice, but unlike her childhood self, she made an effort not to be a complete troll to the ones around her unless they deserved it. Those days it was mainly her parents who held that dubious honor. Quirky boys who liked to stick their overlarge noses into things that didn't concern them definitely didn't warrant the sting of her tongue, regardless how annoying they were.
"I got into an argument with someone and went on a walk to clear my head," she settled for saying, perfectly aware of how much she was downplaying her situation. "Lost track of time and ended up getting caught in this."
"You're pretty lucky then," Arnold said after a moment.
Helga's neck cracked painfully as she swiveled her head to look at him. "Ow, ow, ow," she gasped, gripping her neck as agony swept from her shoulders to the crown of her head. "Shit fricking ow."
Arnold took a step closer to her. "Uh, you alright?"
"Do I look like I'm alright?" she snapped. "Just. Give me a moment, shit."
Two cars passed as she waited for the pain to ease. She ignored the way Arnold was eyeing her in concern—because that did things to her, even though the rational part of her knew his concern stemmed from him being a genuinely nice guy and not from any feelings she wished would exist. For an instant Helga struggled to deal with two aches in distinctly different places, but eventually both faded—one due to time and the other through practiced strength of will.
"Okay, I'm good now," she said when her neck no longer felt like it was going to burst. She rolled her shoulders to work out the remaining kinks and said, "C'mon, Arnoldo, before the universe realizes I'm no longer suffering and tries to remedy that."
Arnold laughed like he thought she was joking. Helga wished she were. The two of them resumed their trek—this time walking near the edge of the sidewalk. She was already soaked through and the only thing dashing between awning had accomplished was exacerbating the ache in her legs.
"What did you mean that I was 'pretty lucky?'" she finally asked.
Arnold tore his gaze away from the sky and looked at her. "Just that," he said. "I mean, you said you came out here to clear your head, right? Well, storms are good for that sort of thing."
A sudden crash of thunder overhead, followed shortly by lightning that filled the streets with light, made her jump. She pressed her hand against her chest because shit, that had scared her and tried to regain control of her frantic heart.
"You're crazy," she said, eyeing their surroundings warily. One good thing about living in the city was that everything was huge. After the whole getting-abandoned-at-the-park-by-her-negligent-parents-during-a-storm fiasco, Helga had thoroughly researched safety procedures for thunderstorms. As long as they weren't out in the open, and were surrounded by objects that were infinitely taller than they were, they should be fine. Should be.
"Maybe," Arnold said easily, and when Helga glanced sideways at him it was to find him smiling at her.
Her heart did another flip, and she hastily turned away.
Curse her stupid heart and its stupid unwillingness to let go of the first person to have ever touched it. Sixteen years old and Helga was still as hopelessly in love with Arnold as she'd been when she was six. Perhaps she no longer felt inclined to build shrines in his image—thank Pete—but she still loved him. Still thought of him constantly. Was still as affected by him as she'd always been.
It didn't help that she had no idea where she stood with him. Theirs was a relationship that even Helga had difficulty putting into words. They had been through too much together to be considered acquaintances, but were friends only in the loosest sense of the word. They'd go weeks, sometimes, without speaking more than a handful of words to each other and then would somehow find themselves having hours-long conversations in the strangest of places. They didn't share a single class or live anywhere near each other, yet time and time again they found themselves occupying the same space—like now.
And then there were the looks. Sometimes she'd catch Arnold looking at her a certain way, and okay, Helga had spent years studying him—knew his quirks and habits, his tells and tics, better than she knew the lines of her own palm even—yet still she could not decipher the looks he sometimes gave her when he thought she wasn't looking. It was too loaded to decipher, and perhaps if she had time she could unravel it, pick each emotion apart like tangled yarn, but there never was. They came quick and disappeared quicker and had it been anyone other than the boy she'd spent a lifetime watching she wouldn't have been convinced of its existence at all.
"Why do you like storms so much?" she found herself blurting out, because she couldn't not ask. Couldn't pass up on the opportunity to learn something that she'd never known about Arnold before.
I'm pathetic, she thought, resigned.
Arnold's answer was immediate. "The silence."
Helga cast him a disbelieving look. "Could you repeat that? I don't think I heard you properly over the deafening sounds of thunder, rain and wind."
He rolled his eyes at her, but she could see the corners of his lips twitching.
"Thunder, rain, and wind. Okay. So what else can you hear?"
"That's the point, Arnoldo. I can't hear anything else because those three things are literally overwhelming everything."
"Exactly." Arnold sounded satisfied.
"You really are crazy," Helga said after a beat, eyeing him and wondering how she'd missed that all these years.
"You're missing my point," Arnold sighed. "Think about it, Helga: it's barely eight o'clock and we're hardly in the quietest area of the city, yet all you hear is thunder, wind, and rain. No vehicles or chatter or dogs barking. No laughing or shouting. No ringtones. No sirens. Nothing but thunder, wind, and rain. Don't you think that's amazing? How often is it that the city goes completely silent like this?"
"…Okay. Is that all?" she asked, not quite understanding why that was so amazing. As far as she was concerned, the never-ending ruckus of the city was greatly preferable to the nervewrecking racket of a storm. She'd take the former over the latter any day.
Clearly Arnold didn't share that sentiment, because he looked at her as if he was disappointed with her response, which made her feel disappointed with herself before she shoved the exasperating emotion away. Just because you like the guy doesn't mean you have to agree with him on every single thing, she reminded herself. Just brush it off. You're okay.
"That doesn't explain what you meant about storms being good places to clear a person's head," Helga made herself continue. "I mean, you could easily invest in a good pair of earplugs if the noise of the city bothers you."
Arnold said something, but it was drowned out by a sudden too-loud crash of thunder. Helga's hands clenched into fists at her sides as they waited it out.
"It's not the same thing," he repeated once it was over, "but that's not what I was referring to. I…I don't know how to explain it, to be honest."
"Try," Helga demanded as she futilely wiped rain water from her eyes.
She could've sworn she heard Arnold say "Yes, your majesty," under his breath, but couldn't be sure.
"You've been out of the city before, haven't you, Helga?"
Helga had no idea where he was going with this. "Obviously."
"So you've seen what the night sky looks like without all the light and pollutants, right?"
Stars. An infinite number of them, scattered like fireflies across an endless black sea. The moon, a white disc so close it never seemed as unreachable as it actually was. Clouds, silver wisps of smoke interspersed throughout. All of it ineffably large and vast.
"Yeah," she said softly, remembering.
"And you remember what you felt like when you saw it?"
Small. Tiny. A mere granule of sand on an endless beach.
"Yeah," repeated.
"That's how storms make me feel." Arnold's voice was a hush, barely audible over the whirring wind. "Small. They remind me that I'm just a blade of grass on a field, and that no matter how massive or overwhelming my own problems are, in the grand scheme of things…they're nothing. Other people have experienced the same thing, have experienced worse things, so what good does it do me to act like I'm the only one with problems?
"It's not like they give me clarity or anything. Just…perspective. When I think about how millions of other people are experiencing the same storm, some of them coming out worse for it, I feel like I should be proactive about my problems rather than just wallowing. I mean, not with everything. Some things are just completely out of your control, you know? But I remember to focus on what I can do instead of what I can't.
"There are other things to like about them, too," he continued with a shrug. "Like the atmosphere and the smell. But those things alone wouldn't be enough to drive me outside." He paused and added, "Probably."
Helga felt a flicker of surprise by the thoughtfulness—not to mention honesty—of his answer before discarding it. Honest and thoughtful was Arnold in a nutshell. She dragged her eyes away from him and directed them in front of her, silent as she turned his words over in her head. They made sense when put that way. She hadn't expected them to, but they did. Helga could remember the first night she spent at her grandparent's upstate estate, laid out on a blanket on a nearby hill as the ineffableness above her rendered her completely silent. It was how she had spent every night of that month-long vacation, lured by the carnival of dancing lights and awed by how small she'd felt in comparison. For the first time she could remember she'd no longer felt like her emotions were so swollen inside her she was bursting at the seams, coming apart.
Perspective. Enough to realize that she was one in several billions. That her feelings, while relevant, weren't as unique or immense as she thought them to be. That her problems were not the end of the world. When summer ended and she returned to the loud, garish city and looked upon Arnold for the first time in weeks, her heart had stuttered but it hadn't stopped. She'd greeted him with only the tiniest hitch in her breath and when he'd returned it, smile small but genuine, she'd been able to smile back without feeling like her chest would burst. Her love had felt bearable, when before it hadn't been.
"I got into a fight with my parents." The words tumbled off her tongue before she could stop them. "And didn't so much as 'go for a walk to clear my head' as I 'ran to get the hell away from them.'"
A strange combination of regret—because what the hell, Helga?—and relief—because she hadn't told anyone about her worsening relationship with her parents, not even Phoebe—filled her. The regret was starting to overwhelm everything else when the boy at her side remained silent, and she opened her mouth, intent to take it back, when he finally spoke up.
"I had an argument, too. With my grandparents. It wasn't so bad that I was driven out, but I knew that if I stayed I'd eventually lose my temper and say something I'd regret."
A beat of silence, and then, "My parents are pissed that I want to major in literature. Bob doesn't want to pay a shit ton of money for such a 'useless degree.' Because apparently there's no way I'd make it big enough to be anything other than a unemployed starving artist."
"I don't want to go to college," Arnold admitted. "At least not immediately. I want to join a program like the Peace Corps. Do some good in the world until I figure out what I want, y'know? My grandparents think I'm being stupid, and maybe I am, but that's my choice."
"I don't see anything wrong with that," Helga said, noting absently that the rain was finally trickling down to a drizzle. "It's not as if you need a college degree or anything. Bob didn't get one and that didn't stop him from running a successful business."
When Arnold failed to respond, she turned to look at him, and immediately flushed at the wide-eyed look he was giving her.
"What?" she said, hating how defensive she sounded.
A slow smile spread across his face, and he shook his head, sending rainwater at her. "Nothing. It's just…you're the first person who's actually said that. My friends all think I'm being stupid, too."
"Yeah, well," she muttered, dropping her gaze to the ground. Arnold was looking at her again, that same undecipherable something in his eyes, and it was making her heart go haywire.
"I think you're making the right choice, too," he said as they rounded a corner and began heading down an avenue that was welcomingly familiar. "For going after what you're passionate about. Lots of people go their whole lives without figuring that out. Besides, you're definitely more likely to end up being a bestselling novelist than a starving artist."
Brows drawing up, Helga swiveled her head to look at him. Arnold sounded so sure, but how—?
"I've read some of the stuff you've published in magazines. Ms. Jakovich shows them to anyone who asks."
"And you do?" she demanded, voice high.
Arnold's hand rose to the back of his neck and he averted his gaze. "Okay, so it's more like she flaunts them to anyone and everyone who steps into her office, but after the first time? Yeah. I mean, I've always known that you were good writer, Helga, but I had no idea how talented you actually were. That's why I'm so sure that if anyone could graduate with a degree in literature and be successful, it'd be you."
Helga was so grateful for the cloak of night surrounding them. Her face was on fire. She felt mortified that the head of their English department was sharing her writing like a doting parent would their kid's photos, and to Arnold of all people. The mortification grew as she remembered some of the short stories and poems she published, all under the belief that no one she knew—save a handful of her teachers, Olga, and Phoebe—would actually read them. For Pete's sake, her last published work had been a love poem titled The Boy With The Pretty Eyes.
Helga wanted to die. She covered her face with her hands and inwardly groaned, almost grateful for the chill in the air. Without it she would have definitely gone up in flames. Arnold called her name, but she ignored him, not quite ready to speak to him knowing he'd read her poems. Poems written about him. Because Helga was an idiot with a lack of foresight and an inability to think things through.
She heard Arnold sigh, but rather than appease her, like she half-expected him to, he simply said, "The storm's ending."
As if to refute that, the sky let loose a sudden rumble of thunder that raised gooseflesh on her arms. Despite it, Helga knew that Arnold was right. The pauses between thunder was growing and already the rain had gentled to a mist. The wind, too, had grown quieter, more whisper than howl. She looked up to see that the sky was still as terrifyingly dim, though less ominous now that there were fewer flashes of lightning to emphasize its darkness.
"This is the best part," he continued, suddenly rushing ahead of her and spinning around so that he was walking backwards, now facing her. "The storm is winding down and we survived it. So now it's time to do something—something that we couldn't, or wouldn't, have done before. Know why?"
Helga spoke the words that sprang to her mind. "Because we can."
Arnold's eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled. "Exactly."
Later, Helga still won't be able to say what exactly caused her to surge forward. At the moment she was barely aware of moving. One moment she was studying the way the light of the overhead lamp brightened the beads of rainwater that clung to Arnold's eyelashes and the next she was bracketing his face with her hands and pressing her lips to his.
The silence of the storm, Arnold had said. She now understood what he meant by that.
Her heart was in her throat as she stepped back, nerves sparking just beneath her skin and blood pounding in her ears. Thunder crackled above them, but it was a distant thing, overwhelmed by the clatter inside of her. Her anxiety grew as Arnold continued to stare at her, eyes wide and lips parted and body as still as hers.
"Something like that, yeah," he said after a too-long pause, and it wasn't the words that calmed the commotion in her chest, but the rejuvenation of his smile—slow and somewhat soppy and entirely detrimental to the wellbeing of her heart. The indecipherable look in his eyes cleared, gave way to something that she couldn't trust enough to name.
"So. Want to go out sometime?"
Helga ignored the butterflies that erupted in her stomach at his words and sent him a look she hoped was unimpressed. "All that talk and that's the best you can do?"
His grin widened. "Helga, I've been crushing on you since we were in seventh grade so would you please do me the honor of agreeing to go on a date with me?" He added cheekily, "Was that better, your majesty?"
Helga made a wordless sound of frustration and reeled him in for another kiss, partially to shut him up and partially to hide just how much his words affected her. To her relief, Arnold reacted. He pushed himself to his toes as Helga angled her head lower, and cupped the sides of her face with a tenderness that ached. The kiss was soft and wet and tasted like rainwater and spearmint. Slow, until Helga grew impatient and deepened it and Arnold met her pace with a smile she felt more than saw. She wasn't sure how long they stood there, kissing, only that when they finally broke to breathe the world had become brighter, and it took her a moment to realize that it was because the moon had finally broken through the clouds. She could see its light reflected in Arnold's hooded eyes, adding a silver sheen to them that she found captivating. Between one heartbeat and the next she was recapturing his lips, hands travelling from his shirt to the wet strands of his hair to the damp skin of his neck, and Helga didn't think she'd ever fear a storm again—not when it would only remind her of this.
There was still the aftermath to deal with. Her issues with her family were nowhere near being resolved, and Helga wasn't naïve enough to believe that things between the two of them would start off easy, never mind remain so. Even now she struggled to fully accept that this wasn't just another wonderful, terrible dream that at any moment she'd wake up from.
The thought struck a painful chord, but before Helga could give into her rising trepidation and pull away, Arnold's words from earlier echoed in her head.
There were things she currently could and couldn't do.
She needed to focus on what she could.
And right then, it was building the foundations for what she hoped to be a long-lasting (Eternal, a voice in the back of her head whispered, but she shoved it down) relationship with the boy she'd loved her entire life.
Hours later, when Helga was warm from a shower and burrowed beneath the covers of her bed, cellphone pressed against one ear as she stared out her window to the clear, calm night, Arnold asked if she'd fallen in love with storms, too.
Her response had been a resolute no.
What she hadn't told him was that as long as they could weather them together, she one day might.
the end
A/N: Thanks for reading, everyone!