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Leonard likes thunderstorms.
They remind him of his childhood: sticky-hot afternoons at his grandparents’ place, the slick cold of a sweating glass of tea, the rumble of a storm brewing, the clatter of rain on the porch roof dulling the creak-creak of the rocking chairs and the murmur of grownup talk. The smell of the air after, and the squelch of the soggy-wet grass, slippery and yielding beneath his feet as he ran back to the orchard, his granny calling after him that he’d best not bring home any more of his little friends, for if the Good Lord wanted earthworms to have a place in her house He’d have given them feet to wipe off on the mat.
His granny’s long gone now, along with everyone else who sat gossiping in those chairs while Leonard stared up at the sky from his perch on the steps, waiting for the light, counting seconds on his daddy’s watch – but still there’s something comforting about a thunderstorm, a funny kind of near-forgotten familiarity, like hearing the squeak of shoes on a basketball court or catching a whiff of fresh-baked cobbler. They bring him back to gentler times, when life was simple and his world fit neatly within the bounds of the wide sky above and the mud-slick earth below.
Besides, thunderstorms usually mean he’s on Earth, or at least on a planet with a similar climate, and that’s always a plus in his book. The minor vexation of needing to run around closing up all the windows when the wind gets to blowing is a small price to pay for the rare privilege of having windows he can open in the first place.
He doesn’t have too much of a preference for where they end up on any given night, though protected from the elements and not being actively hunted are qualities he’s learned the hard way not to take for granted. Home is wherever Jim’s laying his head, whether that’s their quarters on the ship or the apartment in San Francisco, a massive starbase teeming with activity or their remote little cottage on Ofrosia, airy resort rooms with star-speckled ceilings or rickety dirt-floored shacks constructed by a species that somehow managed to devise a method of faster-than-light travel without ever cracking the secret of indoor plumbing.
Sure, some of the lodgings they get put up in are a damn sight less comfortable than others, but while Leonard may grumble, the truth is it’s all more or less the same to him. So long as he’s got Jim with him, the particulars don’t much matter.
Still, there is something to be said for the sort of place where a good steady rain might chance to fall during their stay. Lying in their latest borrowed bed with Jim twined around him, rain drumming against the roof, thunder rolling through some distant corner of the sky, Jim’s arm heavy across his belly, the far window cracked just enough to let in the scent of dry earth reawakened by a long-awaited rainfall – hell, that’s about as near to true peace as Leonard figures he’s ever likely to get.
Jim doesn’t have, like, a stance on thunderstorms. He doesn’t feel one way or the other about them, rarely has a reason to even think about them at all except for when he gets caught out in one too long and Bones tells him off for coming home with numb fingers or chattering teeth. That’s the case for just about any kind of weather event, though, really. Jim’s forever getting yelled at for returning to the ship with frostbite or heat exhaustion or trench foot or the bends or bloody pockmarks from the walnut-sized hail on Klemn. It’s always something.
But.
Jim has this thing about unexpected bursts of noise. Normal thunder isn’t a problem, barely even registers on his radar, but every once in a while they’ll be on some planet or another and the meteorological conditions will align just right and suddenly there will be this incredibly intense crack of thunder, the kind that jolts through you like an electric shock and snaps you out of the deepest sleep, convinced that the roof is caving in or something’s exploded in the next room over.
Jim…doesn’t do so well with that.
Those monster thunderclaps usually wake Bones too – they wake everyone, including the comatose and the recently dead, Jim would guess – but he’s fine as soon as he gets over the initial jolt and realizes it’s just a storm rather than an attack or Jim blowing something up again. A stretch, a yawn, maybe a good belly scratch or a drowsy squeeze of Jim’s ass, and he’s ready to roll over and fall right back to sleep, like a normal person who understands how fucking weather works.
As with so many things, though, the problem is Jim: Jim and his stupid fucked-up brain, the animal instinct lighting him up from head to toe, screaming at him that he needs to get out, to hide, to run before it’s too late. He can’t settle back down as easily as Bones does. He can’t settle at all, his whole body surging with adrenaline, tense and shaky with it, keying him up to run run run –
Bones stretches again, his chest rumbling with a sleepy groan somewhere between contentment and aggravation. His hand drops onto Jim’s head, heavy and warm, petting clumsily over his hair, thumbing at his cheek.
“’s okay, kid,” he mumbles. “Little rain never hurt nobody.”
Jim shifts closer along Bones’s side, helped along by the arm that slides up his back to curl around his shoulders. He turns his face into Bones’s neck and breathes deep, filling his lungs with him. The fear is starting to loosen its grip, his muscles relaxing into the heat of Bones’s body, the tightness in his chest unclenching a little more with every lazy scratch of Bones’s fingers against his scalp. The sharp pounding panic of his heart is slowing, muffled by the solid press of Bones’s chest.
There won’t be any running; not tonight. There’s nowhere to run to, no place safer than here, right exactly here: a bed he’s never slept in before, a room he’s never seen in the daylight, a compound swarming with dozens of envoys from warring factions he’s trusting to honor his diplomatic immunity and not murder him in his sleep.
And at the center of it all – Bones. Warm, groggy, rock-solid Bones, here in this unfamiliar bed with him because there’s no telling how long these peace talks are going to take and Jim’s spent too many cold, lonely nights away from home recently. Because Jim asked him to come along this time, and he said yes. Because Jim is tired of missing him, and he must be tired of missing Jim too, considering he agreed to come right away without even making Jim work for it.
Because Jim wanted him here, needed him here, and so here he is. Just like always.
Another crack of thunder, painfully loud, so loud Jim would swear he feels it reverberate in his teeth. It’s fine, though. He’s ready for it this time, understands what it is and what it’s not, and Bones is so warm against him, sighing out a long pleased breath as Jim rubs slow circles over his chest.
“All righ’?” he asks, thick-slurred with sleep, his hand gone still in a loose curl around the side of Jim’s neck.
“All right.” Jim kisses under Bones’s ear, pitches his voice low and drawling in imitation: “Back to sleep, darlin’.”
Bones must already be most of the way there, because he doesn’t react to the tease, just sighs again and obeys orders, fingers slipping down a little from their lax hold on Jim’s neck, throat flexing under Jim’s lips as his head tilts away to the side.
Jim’s too awake to follow him down just yet, but that’s okay. He’s happy to lie here for a while, listening to the rain tapping on the windowpanes, measuring out the rhythm of Bones’s heartbeat beneath his hand. He’ll soothe him back to sleep if he stirs, roused by another cymbal crash of thunder, and eventually he’ll drift off himself, lulled by the familiar comfort of Bones’s body against him: the shape of him, the soap-salt scent of his skin, the dull pounding of his heart marking time between one breath and the next.