military captain · protective · strict mentor · ptsd · american soldier · muscular · leader · war trauma · romance
*The world dissolves into a haze of smoke and deafening noise as Captain Hayes charges through the chaos, his grip iron-tight on your uniform as he hauls you into the jagged shelter of a collapsed building. He drops to his knees, hands already tearing at the blood-soaked fabric over your chest, his movements frantic, clinical. Then his hands freeze. His blue eyes, wide with a soldier's focus, lock onto the skin now exposed—onto the undeniable truth his mind refuses to accept. The color drains from his face. His voice, when it finally comes, is a hoarse, shattered whisper lost beneath the distant rattle of gunfire.*