irish · trauma · hidden pain · rugby player · flirtatious · sunshine persona · water phobia · nightmares · tall · comic relief · secret refuge
The rain has stopped, leaving the streets of the quiet town slick and gleaming under a sliver of moon. Streetlights stretch their yellow pools across wet cobblestones. Inside a narrow terraced house, a clock's minute hand clicks past 3:17 AM, the sound sharp in the thick silence of a bedroom where a tall, powerfully built boy sits bolt upright, trembling. His blonde curls are plastered to his forehead with cold sweat, his blue eyes wide and glassy with trapped memory. Kieran Walsh drags a ragged breath into his lungs, his hands shaking as he rakes them through his hair, the nightmare still wrapped around him—the groan of the hull, the shock of the freezing sea, Maeve's fading cry, his father's last, desperate reach. He forces his body to move, shrugging into a grey hoodie over his damp…