few F-bombs, I think. Kissing... slash...
lightning... yeah. It's PG-13.
pairing: Markus Naslund X Todd Bertuzzi. Love the
Canucks pairing. It makes me happy...
summary: ... pointless slash? Nazzy likes the
lightning for some strange reason... Bert is afraid
of it... kinda... for some strange reason. Oh yeah,
and a Swedish counting lesson. Yay!
Contact info: If anyone ever needs it, email @
cam18_zak20@yahoo.com.
Finally... the story. Short, sweet, and straight to
the point! ^^
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When I was a child, I had always been the type to disobey orders from my parents and press my nose against the windows, in hope of catching a glimpse of
a violent thunderstorm. On spring and summer nights, when the evening sky began to grow threatening, we’d have this radio in our kitchen that we’d turn on, and
the one station that it broadcast would warn us of any severe weather that was approaching. The man, with his monotonous voice, would always advise people to
avoid windows and trees, open expanses of flat land, and using the telephone.
And amidst it all -- when the power went out and the rumbling claps of thunder drew nearer -- there I was, with my face and hands smudging up the windows that gave me a view of our street. The instinctive terror of the flashes of lighting that danced across the sky was a certain stimulus for me; seeing the spidery reaches of heated electricity dazzle the night sky filled me with a certain unexplainable satisfaction. It was the thrill of seeing something that could kill me and anyone in an instant; it was the wonder and awe of witnessing the equally beautiful and deadly forces of nature; it was the childish sense of freedom of defying the weatherman’s warnings.
Violent thunderstorms weren’t particularly uncommon in Sweden and they still aren’t. All too often, we’d get the mingling of cool, moist air and hot, dry air and before you’d know it, you could hear the low rumble of thunder off in the distance. The chilly gusts of wind would start to roll in; the light would
attain a strange, glowing quality and the sides of houses and barns would look as if they were on a sort of fire; you’d hear rain pounding, miles away. Minutes later, all the wind and thunder and rain would slam into you and at that moment, as gray squall clouds masked the late-afternoon rays of the sun, you were in the center of the storm.
But it happened all the time. And, when these storms came, I would sit there and watch; whether it was inside, in the dry comfort of my home, or in the
driveway, when an unexpected system would blow through and interrupt our street hockey games. My friends and I would stand there on the pavement, leaning against
our sticks, staring up at the angry, turbulent sky. We wouldn’t blink, not even when the wind picked up and the rain started to pour down. We were tough
boys, and we welcomed the precipitation. It washed the sweat away. The shivering was good for us. Not until the thunder shook the ground did we retreat inside, sometimes unwillingly, and sit at the window with some type of warm drink and just watch.
It was this sort of morbid fascination with the lightning and the thunder and the rain and just the storms in particular. We’d see them at least twice a
week, and yet, there was something new every time one rolled in. The clouds were different colors, different shapes; the light was coming from a different angle; the raindrops were smaller than usual; we had never seen the wind blow so fast or the lightning branch out across the sky like gigantic trees. Those were our excuses for crowding in front of the windows, still wearing our street hockey gear, a mixture of rainwater and sweat smeared across our young faces. We couldn’t get enough.
Vancouver, British Columbia -- where the weather
could be as unpredictable and as angry as Todd
Bertuzzi’s mood.
“C’mon, Bert,” I pleaded, crossing my arms over my chest. “I would never have believed that a little weather report would throw you off so much!”
The massive forward whipped around from the refrigerator to face me. “Little?!” he hissed.
“Severe weather, Nazzy? Does that strike a bell?” He turned back to what his focus had been -- seeking out food -- and grabbed a carton of milk.
“You call a thunderstorm severe?!” I shot back, a wry smile spreading on my lips. I pointed outside, through the kitchen window, at the gray clouds that
stretched across the late-afternoon sky. They were dark, in places, especially off to the east, and from the looks of the bending tree limbs, the wind was
really starting to pick up. But severe? “It’s only a little storm! I mean, come on, Bert, it’s not like you’ll be standing in the middle of the golf course,
with your iron raised in mid-swing!”
“But they’re saying it’s gonna be severe,” he pressed, and poured himself a glass. “High winds, possibility of hail, even. Tell me, do you wanna be
out there when it’s hailing?”
I shrugged. “Hail’s not all that bad, Bert, unless it’s the size of hockey pucks.” I flashed him a charming grin and added, “And I know that a tough guy like you can take on chunks of ice.”
Todd rolled his eyes and turned around to replace the gallon of milk on the top shelf of the refrigerator. When he faced me again, he asked, “Were you a weird child or something, Markus? Did you enjoy frolicking in those Swedish thunderstorms with Peter Forsberg and the rest of the gang?”
I laughed. “To tell you the truth, Bert, you’re almost right-on.” But I added, “I know you, I know how you were locked outside and forced to skate on
your lake ‘till it got dark.”
“Not in the middle of thunderstorms, I wasn’t,” he said simply, crossing one arm over his chest and using the other to pick up his drink and take a gulp. “You know as well as I do that these Vancouver thunderstorms are a force to be reckoned with. Nothing like that stuff back in Sweden.”
Sighing, I took a seat at the dining table. Todd and I were camped out at my house, for what reason I didn’t know, and for the past hour and a half we had
been busying ourselves with raiding the refrigerator and arguing about what to do next. At the mention of a seemingly simple, innocent walk around the block,
Bertuzzi had gone crazy and insisted that the storm in the forecast would be too much of a hazard to deal with when it struck. I had tried to make the idea of
getting soaked with rainwater sound appealing to Bert -- and I thought that it would be an easy task – but it proved to be somewhat of a challenge so far.
“Bert, have you ever even been to Sweden? And I’d think that you, being the tough bastard that you are, would have no objection to walking in a bit of an electricity storm.”
“One, I’ve been to Sweden during a thunderstorm, and two, shut the fuck up.” He took another long drink from the glass of milk.
“Bert, cheery as usual,” I grumbled. “Watch out, you might just get struck by lightning when a bolt slices down through the roof.”
“Don’t even imply or suggest it,” he hissed. “It’s bad luck!”
“You’re scared of lightning,” I said matter-of-factly.
Todd shook his head. “No.”
“You are fucking scared of thunderstorms!”
“I so am not!”
I stood up so that my height could be closer to that of his, and I smirked. “You wanna prove it?”
My challenge of what Bert and countless other males considered their “manhood” soon led to the pair of us walking side-by-side along the street. The rain hadn’t started to fall, yet, but I knew that opening stage of the storm was not far away. The swirling, leaden clouds had already stretched across the
mid-July sky, covering up what Todd called “welcome sunlight.”
Bert had his hands shoved in his coat pockets, and judging by the look on his face, he was none too happy. “I can’t believe you, Nazzy,” he grumbled.
“You drag me out here into the fucking rain!” He flashed me what I saw as a smirk and added, “I swear you’re trying to get me killed or something.”
I rolled my eyes and slid my right arm through the crook of Todd’s elbow, pulling him closer. “It hasn’t even started to rain yet,” I said, glancing up into the soup of clouds above us. “And, Bert, why would I ever wanna get you killed? You know as well as I do
that’s a stupid idea.”
“To save me the embarrassment of being convicted of some pansy-ass crime, in front of the whole National Hockey League?” he suggested, raising his eyebrows.
“C’mon, Naz, I’m not scared of storms. I just don’t like them very much. Can we go back inside now?”
“No, ‘cause we’re only to the end of my street!” I laughed. “Don’t worry, Bert, I’ll be here to protect you if the big, bad lightning strikes.”
He tried unsuccessfully to hide a grin. “Oh, fuck you, Nazzy.”
Todd was right when he said that the thunderstorms of Vancouver were nothing like those of Sweden. The cool air fronts moving in from the Pacific Ocean collided with the warmer air from the Canadian mainland, and this mixing of differing air resulted in high winds and crazy, swirling clouds. The branches of the maple trees that lined the street bent in the breeze; the pale underside of their broad leaves turned upward in the wind. The first rumble of thunder sounded in the distance, much like the noise of a faroff jet or airplane.
“Wonderful,” Bert said as a sudden updraft almost took his New York Yankees hat away. He pulled the baseball cap tighter over his head and muttered, “If it starts to rain, Nazzy, you are so dead.”
I grinned adventurously and said, “I kinda like the sound of that.” At that moment, the rain began to fall. It wasn’t
the gradual kind, where it started out as a sprinkle
and grew into a steady, healthy shower. When it hit,
it hit. And Todd and I found ourselves in a sudden
downpour. “Goddammit, Nazzy!” Bert hollered, not
sounding angry, but sounding more frustrated than
anything else. “I told you that it would fucking
rain!”
Saying nothing, I smiled and shut my eyes, savoring
the feel of the cold raindrops drilling into my back.
I tilted my head upward, and let the precipitation
fall upon my face, covering my glasses with water. I
could feel the rain running down my back beneath my
shirt; it made me shiver and I leaned into Todd’s
side.
“All you’re gonna get outta this is hypothermia,” he
grumbled, wrapping his left arm around me. “You’ve
got your storm, Nazzy. Don’t you think it would be a
good idea to go back inside now?”
I pulled back a little so that I could look Todd in
the eye. “I don’t have my storm yet, Bert. Wait a
little while. It will be here any minute.”
“Yeah?” he asked, pulling me close to him again,
more roughly this time. “And how do you know that?”
I sighed and explained to the taller man the counting
trick, where you count in seconds as soon as you see a
flash of lightning then stop when you hear the rumble
of thunder soon afterward. You take the number and
divide it by five, I explained, with much
embellishment from hand gestures, and the final number
is how far, in miles, the storm is from where you are.
Todd grunted and nodded his head in approval. “It’s
a good trick,” he said. “Think we can try it?”
I nodded, and looked to the east where the darkest of
the clouds were. Ever since I had glanced in that
direction from the kitchen window, the storm had
appeared to edge closer, much closer, in fact, and
looked all the more threatening. There was a flash of
lightning in the clouds, and I began to count. “En…
två… tre… fyra… fem… sex… sju… åtta… nio…” In the
distance, thunder rumbled, and it sound muffled,
strangled, almost. I went through a quick math
calculation in my head, then murmured, “Relax. It’s
a little under two miles away.”
“Swedish show-off,” Todd growled, a grin snaking
across his face. “Why can’t you count in English like
a normal person?”
“Shut up,” I said, rolling my eyes. “You wouldn’t
know normal, now would you?”
“You make me laugh, Swede,” Bert mumbled, pulling me
closer. Thunder sounded off in the distance, but it
was louder than it had been a moment earlier. The
rain poured down even harder, and Todd pulled his hat
tighter over his head. “So do you have to be in the
very center of the storm when you finally call it
quits and go inside, or what?” he asked. “Or do you
have to wait until lightning strikes a nearby tree?”
I laughed, hugging the taller man tightly with my
right arm. His polo shirt was absolutely soaked, and
I knew that I wasn’t faring any better. “No, I wait
until I feel my hair standing on end,” I said
sarcastically. “When I feel like a human lightning
rod, then I decide to leave.”
“I hope you’re joking,” Bertuzzi said. “I can’t
ever tell if you’re joking or not. It’s hard with you
Swedes.”
“Is it?” I asked, tilting my head upward. Our lips
brushed for a brief moment, and there was a quick
flash of lightning.
En…
Todd circled his other arm around my waist, pulling
me up against his chest.
Två…
In turn, I embraced him tightly, my fingers sliding
across the rain-drenched fabric of his shirt.
Tre…
The big winger brought me into a brutal kiss, forcing
his tongue into my mouth. I could feel him exploring
it eagerly, and I returned the gesture.
Fyra…
I felt one of Todd’s hands run up my back, then rest
in my tangled, soaked hair. I deepened the kiss, and
the other man let out a low, throaty moan.
Fem…
Bert’s other hand found its way under my shirt; the
contact of his warmth against my cold, damp skin was
too much of a sensation and I melted into his embrace,
tightening my arms around him even more.
Sex…
There was a sharp clap of thunder, and Todd took his
lips away from mine. “What do you say we go back?” he
asked. “Warm up, dry off, get a little wet again while
we’re at it? A little bit of good fucking?”
I smiled, ignoring the rivulets of rainwater running
down my face. In contrast, it looked like Bert was
actually crying, but being in the rain and all, you
could never be able to tell for sure. There was
another flash of lightning, followed quickly by a loud
rumble of thunder that literally shook the pavement we
were standing on. I took a step back from the taller
forward, looking him in the eyes, and responded,
“Bert, that’s a great idea.”
“You lead the way.”
I grinned, took him by the hand, and began to tug him
in the direction of my house. “With pleasure,” I
said, beginning to move at a slow jog.
“As always.”
~fin~