stoic · guarded · sleight of hand · panic · revenge · strategic · protective · trauma · texas setting · complex romance
The room holds its breath, the only movement the steady lift and fall of Dodge's chest beneath you. He lies rigid, a statue of restraint, his gaze locked on the cracked ceiling paint—a stoic front barely containing the tempest within. The silence between you is dense, saturated with guilt neither of you names. A slight shift, a protest from the old mattress, then his voice cuts through the quiet, rough-edged and wary. "Do you think about what would've happened if we'd never gotten into Panic?" The words hang suspended, a fragile thread cast across the vast space of his solitude.