Long Time, No See - Levi x Reader (Modern!AU)

37 - What Summer Brings

Spring quickly made way for summer and summer meant warm weather, beautiful sunsets, late nights, and disgusting amounts of humidity. While always an ill omen for nasty, sweaty days and an awful hair day to boot, this humidity of course unfortunately brought with it thunderstorms. Or at least it would. Eventually. If ever this summer decided to bring one along.

Summer had only just begun but so far, it'd been rather tame, at least by my standards... my standards obviously being how I knew the summers to be here where we lived. It was tame. That was all.

However, I knew it was just biding its time and all too soon we'd have our first big storm of the season. So far, we'd had lots of rainfall, plenty of humidity, and stretches of days with nothing but dry heat. At this point, I knew the weather was just toying with me, waiting for me to let my guard down before throwing a storm our way.

Not that I had a problem with the storms, no. Not particularly. But Levi...

All these years later, his mind still feared the flashes of lightning, the rain pounding against the window, and the rumbling of thunder as it rolled across the land. If I asked, he'd get defensive, and tell me how stupid it was to fear something so trivial and then clam up about it.

But he couldn't help it. Not when he'd had to watch his two closest, dearest friends – Farlan and Isabel – die during one such storm.

To his mind, all storms were the same. They were omens of ill-fate. Terrible harbingers of pain and fear... and death.

It all felt like a fictitious tale, to be frank. For so many awful things to happen to one person... Life could be cruel, yes, endlessly cruel to those that didn't deserve it, but this? For him to be forever plagued by the fear of losing more people that he cared about all because it was stormy out?

It was awful, and yet while I might enjoy drinking tea and watching the storms go by, he loathed them. I had it easy. I really did. How many storms had there been in my lifetime, where I'd hardly batted an eye to them? During some I would look out of the window longingly. During others I would nap. During others I would do... literally anything. But Levi...

Now that we lived together, I could be there for him during the nights when all that could be heard were the storms. I could comfort him. I could try to bring his mind some peace, and perhaps allow him to get some rest on those awful nights. I could make up for all the time we'd spent away from each other, all the nights he'd needed to deal with them on his own.

I could maybe... help him work through this fear.

That's exactly what I planned to do.

I wasn't sure if it would work or if I could even do it, but I would at least try.

Because he didn't deserve to fear something so normal, so natural, so frequent. He didn't deserve to fear anything, no one did. But especially not him, and especially not something like this. I was prepared to help him as best I could.

All I had to do was wait for a storm... and I knew we both were dreading it, for he so hated them, and I so hated to see him suffer.

And as life always worked out, what you were dreading always came so much quicker than things you were excited for.

---

I stood idly now at the apartment window, one hand holding the curtain back so I could see outside. The window was open, but the air coming in was stagnant and humid and gross. I'd wanted to let a breeze in, but it was just so muggy outside, it was disgusting. I closed the window with an impatient huff. What an awful day.