Work Text:
In the aftermath of the storm that had wrecked her project, broken her friendship with Javi, and killed three of their closest friends, Kate Carter had wanted nothing more than to make a clean break in her life. For a while, she'd even contemplated leaving meteorology behind entirely. But when she'd finally scraped up the wherewithal after the funerals to withdraw from her graduate program, Professor Harding had given her a piece of advice that she hadn't appreciated enough at the time.
"Look, I get it, kid," she'd said, watching Kate with understanding eyes. "A trauma this big, there's no getting around it. Of course it's going to change things for you. How could it not? But try not to make any choices you can't walk back from when things get a little less overwhelming. Open a new door if you need to. But leave the window cracked open a little if you can. I'd hate to see this storm take any more from you than it already has."
If anyone would know about storms, loss, and second chances, it would be Dr. Jo Harding; somehow, the advice had felt a little less abrasive coming from her than it had from anyone else. In the end, Kate had still left Muskogee State and Oklahoma altogether for a while, but she hadn't thrown any of her research notes or leftover supplies away. And though she'd taken what she would have once considered an office job with the NOAA rather than follow in Dr. Harding's footsteps as she'd long dreamed, she hadn't quite unplugged from the chasing world as much as she'd let everyone assume, either.
People had been saying her whole life that she loved weather; that no one had better instincts about it than she did. But instincts were only part natural ability; the gut feelings that drove them were often based on subconscious information that the mind had already processed, just on a level too deep for logical thought. School had taught Kate the words and numbers to back those feelings up with scientific explanations, but she'd earned them by being that little girl who'd once escaped naked from the tub to stare up in wonder at the thundering sky. And though much of that wonder had since been tarnished by her losses, she knew she was still that same girl, deep down. So whenever the longing or the grief got a little too much, she'd told herself she was just brushing up on those instincts, gone online, found a chasing video, turned off the volume to avoid any audio cues that might set off another round of nightmares, and kept right on watching the sky.
It was still no substitute for being there in person. She'd second-guessed herself half a dozen times after Javi showed up at her office in New York asking for help, wondering if she was really ready to go back into the field, to the point of making an idiot of herself on her first chase with his StormPAR crew. Listening to the fear instead of her gut. And then, when she'd finally worked through the knee-jerk panic of being so close to a tornado for the first time since the disaster and started feeling like she had her feet under her again, the universe's love of dramatic irony had brought her up close and personal with no less than three more storms even before the big one that hit El Reno. Once on the road with Javi, the second at the rodeo with Tyler, and the third on her own initiative after an argument with Javi sent her running to her mother's and brought her face-to-face with the dangling loose ends she'd left behind.
Kate wasn't sure what would have happened if Tyler's team hadn't finally put two and two together about who she was and he'd tracked her down to make sure she was OK. But hearing him echo Dr. Harding's advice, standing there in that barn surrounded by the debris of her dreams, some wild resonance of hope had spurred her into taking the offered hand and cracking that window back open just a little bit more. Letting his belief in her substitute for her own long enough for one more try.
And somehow, that rollercoaster of a day had given her back more than she ever could have expected. She smiled absently at the warm touch of a hand on her shoulder and looked up from the phone clasped in her hands to meet the warm gaze of one of her partners. "Hey, you guys back already?"
Tyler grinned down at her. He was still a little scruffy and disheveled around the edges from a long day of chasing, but that wasn’t exactly a bad look on him. He knew it, too, by the way he struck a pose when he caught her gaze wandering appreciatively from the five o'clock shadow along his jawline to the cuffed plaid shirt showing off nicely tanned biceps. "Yeah, restocked all the supplies for tomorrow. Picked up the next shipment of merch, too; we dropped it all off with Dexter."
"We?" Kate made a show of leaning to the side to stare behind him at the door, feigning belated disinterest. "Where's Javi? Lose him somewhere along the way?"
Tyler rolled his eyes. "He'll be in in a few; he said he was going to pick up some takeout first. Watching back the stream?" He jerked his chin toward the storm video still playing on the small screen.
"Not ours," she replied, shaking her head. "Don't worry, I didn't miss your face that much. I was checking some of the other coverage from today. We did get some really great footage, I’ll watch that back later too," she conceded, "but we were up a little too close to get a really wide overview of the effects of the dispersal on the storm. I mean, the numbers are one thing – Javi got some really great data, I’m so glad we were able to get the grant in time for him to finish paying off the portable PARs – but to really see it in action at this scale is just ... I can hardly believe it."
Tyler’s grin widened, losing the teasing edge, and he made that twirling gesture with an upraised finger that Kate knew had probably been originally supposed to mimic a lariat but always looked like a twister to her. “Just wait until we get enough proof for everyone to start using it.”
She laughed, making the gesture back at him. “I know there’ll be situations where it can’t work, we’ll have to do a lot more testing of variables, which probably means a lot more travel, but....”
The door to the motel room had opened again while they were talking; Javi made an amused, scoffing sound as he closed it behind him. “However will we cope,” he chuckled.
Tyler grinned over at him, then eyed Kate’s phone again with curiosity. “So whose feed were you watching, then, if not ours?”
“Um, I’m not sure?” Kate blinked and looked back down at the screen. “I don’t usually watch with the volume on; I kind of got out of the habit after ... well, while I was in New York.”
Javi's eyebrows went up as he dropped his keys and wallet on the dresser and drifted over to the little cheaply furnished sitting area where she was curled up on a rough-cushioned chair. He had a couple of paper bags and a drink carrier in his hands; he slid them on the table as he added his two cents. "You can take the girl out of the storms, but not the storms out of the girl, huh? I'm not sure if that makes me feel better or worse about my persuasiveness in getting you to come back out here."
"Oh, that you can put down to the guilt trip, not the persuasiveness or the puppy dog eyes," she informed him, tartly. Then she shut down the phone and dropped it on the table next to the drinks, uncurling slowly to stretch out her legs as she held her hands up to Tyler. "You know, I probably even caught some of the Tornado Wrangler streams back then; I wasn't paying attention to the faces or the voices, obviously, but that might explain the nagging sense of familiarity when we met in person."
"Or, you know, it could have been the kindred spirit thing," Tyler replied warmly, taking her hands and pulling her to her feet. "Always looking up at the sky."
"Well, when you love something, you'll spend your whole life trying to understand it," she quoted back at him, reaching up to drape her arms around his neck.
"Amen to that," he replied reverently, and leaned down for a thorough kiss.
Javi gave a low whistle, then gave Tyler a casual hip-check as they came up for air and leaned in for a hello kiss of his own. "My turn," he said, lingering with Kate a moment, then broke away to grab one of the to-go bags and start excavating the contents. "You were pretty amazing out there today, you know. I think Ben got a lot of good copy for the article."
"You were pretty amazing yourself," she assured him, then snagged Tyler's hand and pulled him back toward the table. "It wouldn't work so well without all three of us, you know. Concept, implementation, and analysis."
"That's me, being the workhorse in the middle," Tyler quipped. Then he dropped into the chair opposite the one she'd been in before – at this price point of motel, there were only two – but instead of pulling her along with him, he reached for one of Javi's beltloops and dragged him squawking into the chair with him instead, fries scattering everywhere as Javi's food organization efforts were interrupted.
Kate laughed, then took over the distribution, throwing a napkin their way as the impromptu wrestling threatened to escalate. "Which, as it turns out, was exactly what we needed. Save that for after dinner, though, I’m starving!"
"Well, we can't have that," Javi said long-sufferingly, abruptly relaxing into as obnoxiously spread-out a position as he could, occupying most of Tyler's lap and half-blocking him from reaching the table. "You promise, though? After?"
Kate rolled her eyes at them, grinning, and sat down to dig in.
Of course, the joy of new and strengthened connections didn't fully erase the trauma of the last several years. Some mornings, Kate still woke with a feeling of sharp loss, Jeb's last words echoing in her mind. More of Javi's habits had changed than just the hair since they'd last spent a lot of time together, courtesy of the years in the military that he couldn't really talk about. And even Tyler had his blue moments; the whole Tornado Wrangler persona he cultivated for the YouTube channel – probably a habit begun in his rodeo days – just meant that he camouflaged them better.
It helped that there were three of them; whoever was having the worst day usually ended up in the middle at night, buffered against the battering of those less tangible storms. Sometimes Kate's morning coffee was mysteriously delivered with a packet of cocoa mixed in. Tyler always spent a little time with any cat or dog he came across, whether belonging to a fellow chaser, motel owner or tornado survivor; it seemed like they could always tell how much he appreciated the uncomplicated affection. And Javi ordered a bunch of miniature dreamcatchers to hang in all the team's vehicles, sharing a nostalgic smile with Kate. They made for an eclectic contrast to the cowboy hats, the drones, and the bumper decal on Tyler's truck that read 'I'll See You In Hail.'
Then, near the end of their first full season together, on the anniversary of the worst day of her and Javi's lives, Tyler had a quick whispered conversation with Lily during the evening parking lot gathering. She nodded, then went inside and came back out with her tattoo equipment.
"Hey, guys?" Tyler said, cautiously. "I know we haven't really talked about this, but..."
Kate exchanged a glance with Javi, then tilted her head at Tyler, feeling the seriousness of the moment. "What's up?"
Tyler stared back for a moment, then took a breath and pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket, holding it out for her and Javi to see. It bore a string of characters in bold black print: (C₃H₃NaO₂)n + Agl.
Javi frowned at the lettering, then looked up at Tyler in sudden recognition. "Sodium polyacrylate and silver iodide?"
"As a reminder. And a promise," Tyler explained. "I thought about a funnel cloud at first, but...."
"No," Kate blurted, staring back at him with wide eyes, reaching out to grasp Javi's hand. "No, that's perfect. All three of us?"
"Of course all three of us," Tyler replied, mouth quirked in a warm smile.
It stung, of course, but no more than any other minor injury she'd ever taken storm chasing, giving back just a little bit more of what that long-ago twister had taken from her life.