Storm had been at the Ministry for months and still felt like he was missing half of every conversation.
Nobody was mean to him. Nobody excluded him on purpose. If anything, everyone was perfectly nice.
That almost made it worse.
One afternoon Mountain stood up from the couch.
A few minutes later he came back carrying tea, coffee, biscuits, fruit, crisps, three different pastries, and somehow an entire sandwich.
"Why did you bring all that?"
Mountain looked confused.
Storm glanced around the room.
Nobody had gone to the kitchen.
Rain looked up from his phone.
"He knows I want biscuits, Aurora wants fruit, and Phantom wants coffee. The sandwich is for Swiss."
"When Mountain said he was going to the kitchen."
That wasn't an invitation to request things.
Apparently everyone else knew differently.
Someone would suggest watching television.
Immediately the room would explode with objections.
"You know how Phantom gets."
Half because everyone else was laughing.
Half because he was trying not to look confused.
He didn't know how Phantom got.
A few minutes later someone suggested Grey's Anatomy.
Rain threw a cushion at him.
Mountain looked physically exhausted.
"Please don't. I don't want to listen to Aether."
Storm had no idea what that meant either.
Everyone else had years of history together.
Sometimes he considered asking.
But conversations moved too quickly.
By the time he'd worked out what he wanted to say, everyone was talking about something else.
One afternoon Rain announced they were heading to the lake.
A few minutes later everyone left.
An hour later he watched from the window as the entire pack sat by the water laughing together.
He wondered why they hadn't wanted him there.
The thought sat heavily in his chest.
Because they were always kind.
But kindness wasn't the same thing as belonging.
And Storm was beginning to wonder if there was a difference everyone else understood that he didn't.