#(kaede.)

In almost twenty-four years of living mostly in Aurora Bay, Harley had never seen a storm like this. Ellie and people at the bar kept saying they heard it was supposed to get bad, but Harley figured Aurora Bay's 'bad' was New York's 'mild'. Surely others thought the same, otherwise there wouldn't be half a dozen people stuck waiting it out overnight in the college. He knew Kaede would have been at home with his daughter if they knew this was going to be how the evening played out.

Harley was ill-prepared, although he felt like his situation was much less stressful than Kaede's. After all, his family lived in Seabrook Quarter and his apartment was far enough away from the ocean that he wasn't worried too much about Ellie or Collins. His anxiety stemmed from his cochlear implants being temporarily out of order. Until he could get to his battery charger (and who knew if the apartments had power anyways?), the listening devices attached to his head were little more than decoration. He only kept them on because it was the safer than tossing them in his bag and it was a visual reminder to other people that he literally couldn't hear anything right now.

He wasn't scared of not being able to hear. Few things were more satisfying than taking off his implants after a long day. What did bother him was that it cut him off from understanding what was happening right now. He watched the conversation of two people nearby, their mouths silently moving. He watched their body language, trying to get a read on if what they were saying was good or bad.

As Kaede approached him, Harley moved his arm to get his boss's attention ("the deaf wave", as it was called). Saying his name probably would have been more effective, but Harley had no gauge for how loud he needed to call out and was self conscious about overestimating it. "Any news?" Harley asked, signing and speaking. The feeling of speaking without being able to hear his own voice reminded him far too much of his childhood and how cut off he'd been from a world that he could see and touch but not communicate with. Everything about him having no control over his deafness right now did. But he brushed that negative thought away and focused on Kaede's response.