novelraw Chapter 131: Settle
Chapter 131: Settle
The movie ended three explosions ago, but the credits kept pretending they had something new to say. Lachlan let them roll. The storm had more to say anyway.
Wind beat the glass like a drumline that hated them. Tiny ice pellets rang a high, steady ding-ding-ding against the panes. Every few minutes the building did a long, slow creak, like it needed to stretch and remember how to be a spine.
He didn’t feel the cold. Never really did anymore.
He peeled down to a threadbare t-shirt and bare feet just to make Zubair grind his teeth; then he pulled socks back on because Sera glanced at his toes and he heard the creature purr an approving little yes when he took the hint. Pack law didn’t need shouting.
Popcorn oil still varnished his fingertips. The room smelled like salt, chocolate, and damp wool. Generator hum under the floor. The kind of night that used to be for bars and bad decisions. Now it was blankets, ration math, and a blizzard trying to chew the windows out of the frame.
Zubair sat like a statue with a pulse, rifle across his thighs, field-stripping it a fourth time because discipline kept his hands from setting the couch on fire. Elias had a notebook open to a clean page and nothing written; he tapped the pencil twice, then stopped, like he caught himself turning into a lecture again.
Alexei sprawled with a lemon slice between his teeth like it was a cigarette, eyes half-lidded, smug and loose. Sera tucked one leg under herself in the corner of the couch, mug cupped in both hands, the steam making a halo out of her hair.
Lachlan itched.
Not a skin itch. A bones itch. Blizzard itch. Do something itch.
He pushed off the chair and started a slow prowl around the room, rolling his shoulders, shadowboxing at ghosts—faint jabs to nowhere, hooks that stopped two inches from the doorframe.
Zubair didn’t look up, but he tracked him anyway; Lachlan could feel the bead of attention like a laser on the back of his neck. Elias’s pencil paused; Alexei snorted a laugh and muttered something in his native language that he probably meant as a compliment and definitely wasn’t.
Sera’s eyes slid to him when he switched stance. Left foot forward, weight down, wrists loose.
Her gaze flicked to his hands; his nails prickled like they always did when adrenaline climbed the ladder. The dark floated at the edges of his sight and then backed off, a tide that knew the shore had teeth.
He dropped his hands. The itch didn’t.
"Report," Zubair said, not to anyone and to everyone at once.
Elias grimaced at his blank page, then shut the notebook. "Greenhouse is fine. Humidity high; I’ll run a towel line to catch drip. Tomato trellis needs a retie. If the storm keeps up two more days, we’ll need to rotate grow lights to protect the lemons."
"That your way of asking for permission to use power?" Lachlan asked, leaning over the back of the couch until his breath fogged Sera’s mug.
"It’s my way of saying if you want fresh fruit next week, we don’t cook the trees this week," Elias said, dry as the popcorn bowl.
"Granted," Zubair said. His voice had the weight of a stamp. "Thirty minutes, then off. We cycle the freezers in the morning; Alexei, you’re on that."
"Da," Alexei said, lazy. "I love to play with meat."
"You are a child," Elias murmured, but the corner of his mouth betrayed him.
Lachlan drifted to the window. White and worse-than-white: the kind of night that erased edges. He put his palm to the glass and felt the storm talk to his bones. It didn’t scare him. It was just loud. Like he was. Like he’d always been.
"You pacing a trench in my floor, or you joining me in the kitchen?" Sera asked without looking over. Her voice was soft, warm, and somehow cut through the wind like a wire.
He grinned and went. The little camp stove threw a stingy heat; he set another pot, shook more kernels into oil, listened for that first satisfying pop. "Behold, humans," he announced. "I bring you carbs."
"Do not set off fire alarm," Zubair said, still not looking up.
"We have a fire alarm?" Lachlan said, innocent.
"We did," Alexei said. "You killed it."
Sera’s breath caught on a laugh she didn’t have to let out. He heard it. That was enough.
The generator hiccupped; the lights fluttered and came back. The building did its long stretch again. Tiny dings of ice kept time against the panes.
He poured the popcorn back into the bowl and then drowned it in salt. Elias made a face, took a handful anyway, because survival didn’t cancel taste. Alexei swiped the bowl and made a scandalized sound when Lachlan tried to steal it back; they jostled shoulders like pups. Zubair didn’t eat. He watched. He always watched.
Lachlan took a lap just to burn the itch. He checked the bolt on the stairwell door and the extra brace he and Alexei had rigged. The wind found a seam and whistled through it like a bad flute.
He wedged a folded shirt into the gap; the note went flat and then stopped. He liked that. Problems that said please and thank you when you solved them.
Back in the living room, Elias had migrated to the greenhouse ledger on the low table, writing actual words now, not just grim lines. Alexei had Sera’s empty mug and was making a production out of rinsing it, like the act of handling it was some kind of ceremony. Zubair watched the window. Sera watched all of them.
"Tomorrow," Zubair said to the glass, "if the wind drops below a hundred, we attempt the stairwell to three floors down. I want to check the south landing for structural. If the skybridge still has integrity, we rig a second anchor."
"Ooh! Field trip," Lachlan exclaimed, practically bouncing on the balls of his feet. "Do we get permission slips?"
"Yours is already in the shredder," Elias replied dryly.
The lights flickered again, before it steadied.
Lachlan felt the urge to run just to hear his feet slap concrete. He didn’t. He hooked his thumbs in his waistband and rocked on his heels like an overgrown teenager until Sera’s eyes found him and held steady. The creature’s approval brushed him like a headbutt. Settle.
He settled. He hated how easy that was.