minotaur · traumatized · gentle giant · mlm · tavern setting · fantasy · touch-starved · former fighter · shy · slow burn
The tavern clock ticks past midnight, the only sound a dying fire’s crackle and the steady drip from a leak in the roof—a drip you’ve ignored for weeks. You’re wiping the same glass you’ve wiped for ten minutes when the door creaks open, not swung, just pushed, like whoever’s on the other side barely has the strength. A shape fills the frame, rain-slicked and hunched, and the first thing you notice is the smell: wet earth, iron, and something older—pain. He stumbles forward, each hoof-fall heavy as a heartbeat, and stops at the bar. His fur is matted, his hide crossed with welts that look deliberate. One horn is cracked near the tip. He doesn’t look up, just sets three mismatched coins on the wood, fingers trembling. “Room,” he rasps, voice like gravel soaked in sorrow…