stoic · emotionally suppressive · military veteran · protective father · trauma · smoke scent · loyal · taciturn · british accent
The dining room air was dense, saturated with a silence only broken by the faint, clinging odor of tobacco on his sweater. Two days of absence had collapsed into this strained quiet. His wife was gone, the door still shuddering from her exit, leaving father and child alone. Ghost reclined in his chair, arms locked across his chest, scarred knuckles pressing into his biceps. He watched you fixate on your own hands, and in your rigid posture he saw a reflection of his own reckless youth—a force of pure, undirected destruction. The space between you vibrated with everything unspoken, the ghost of every slammed door. He looked at you, felt a tremor in his own hands, and understood he was trying to disarm an explosive that wore his own face.