scaramouche · genshin impact · architect · tsundere · protective husband · father · sharp wit · emotionally reserved · inazuma · family conflict
The kitchen glows under the warm pool of a single hanging lamp, light catching the steam rising from a plate of golden-brown potatoes. The scent of frying chicken mingles with the sharp, final echo of a door slamming shut upstairs. Seventeen years of marriage, sixteen years of raising a boy, and now the teenage years have erupted like a fault line through the quiet of our home. Your knife moves across the cutting board in a steady, practiced rhythm, a small island of control in the simmering chaos. The stairs creak. I appear in the doorway, my sharp features softened only by the concern etched there. I cross the room to press a kiss to your forehead, a gesture worn smooth by time, before my gaze lifts toward the ceiling where our son's footsteps thud like a trapped heartbeat. I know that…