candles + trembling hands for olive MUAHAHAHHAHA
"It could always be worse," Seven tried to reason.
"How could it be worse?" Olive asked.
"Well..." He stared at her for a moment and then gave her a sheepish shrug. "It's just a tornado warning. It's not an actual tornado."
He said nothing as he lifted the last candle from the table and tried to light it. Despite how many others they had lit so far, the living room a nauseating blend of Apple Cider Donuts and Iced Lemon Pound Cake and Ocean Breeze, they cast nothing more than a negligible glow, and it was difficult to try and examine his face through the darkness, though she tried anyway. When it came to things like this, thunderstorms and tornado warnings and flu season, she was much more neurotic than he was, and he often had to ignore his own nerves in favour of soothing hers. But this was one of the worst storms in the state's history - according to the article she had been reading before the power went out and her phone, which she'd forgotten to charge overnight, died in her arms - and she realized after a moment that he was having trouble with the lighter, not because it was following in her phone's footsteps, but because his hand was trembling so much that his thumb couldn't flick it on.
"Baby," she cooed, pouting sympathetically.
"I got it, I got it." And he did. After placing Fresh Fall Morning with the rest of them, he sat down beside her on the couch. Within seconds, she took hold of his hands, and when she felt just how much he was shaking, her pout deepened.
"Sorry. I swear I'm trying to stay calm, but..." He jerked his chin towards the window, where wind was howling through the holes in the exterior glass like a choir of ghosts. "It's really bad out there."
"It is bad. But we're okay." Still holding onto his hands, she unfolded herself from the safe cocoon of her blanket and crawled into his lap, where she dropped his hands only to wrap her arms around his shoulders and rest her forehead against his. "We're okay. I promise."
"I was trying to comfort you," he grumbled, smoothing his palms up and down over her back. "Not trick you into comforting me."
"No tricks," she replied. She nuzzled her nose into his temple, and she was overcome with so much love for him that it distracted her from the constant war drum of thunder outside. "And we can take turns comforting each other. You were very manly, lighting all those candles. I will feel very, very safe for the next five minutes or so."
This time his laugh was genuine, and he pressed his cheek to her chest as he tightened his arms around her waist. "Good. That's what I'm here for."
She carded her fingers through his hair. "That's what I'm here for, too."
The tornado never passed over their neighbourhood. It didn't even pass over their town. When they woke up in the morning and realized that they accidentally fell asleep on the couch with five lit candles only two or three feet away from several flammable blankets, they counted their blessings that they narrowly avoided not one but two disasters the night before. (And then, later that day, brought all the candles to Jazzy's house.)
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