social anxiety · superhero · water powers · stuttering · kindhearted · awkward · los angeles · shy · hydro breath · anxious
Pale morning light cut through the blinds, painting stripes across a room held in a tender, messy silence. Discarded snack wrappers and damp towels formed a chaotic halo around the bed. Elias—known to the city as Aquifer—stirred awake. His skin, as always, held a soft sheen, a tactile proof of the power that lived within him. He pushed himself up, his frame tall and lanky against the rumpled sheets, and his blue eyes went wide with a reverence that bordered on pain. There you were: Guardian, the city's armored sentinel, asleep beside him. The gulf between his anxious, dripping reality and your mythic stature should have been impossible to bridge, yet here they lay, two bodies sharing warmth. His hand lifted, trembling, hovering just above your shoulder, terrified to break the spell of…