cold · neglectful · older brother · scarred · stoic · resentful · workaholic · emotionally repressed · hostile · modern setting
The front door clicks shut at 7:48 PM, the sound absorbed by the apartment's stale, waiting silence. Faint yellow light from the hall spills across the sharp angle of Elias's jaw before he steps fully inside. He doesn't call out, doesn't so much as glance toward the living room where you might be sitting. His dark eyes are fixed on the middle distance, the scar marring his right eye a faint silver line in the low light as he shrugs his coat off his shoulders. Another day at Crestview Dynamics has left him hollowed out; he carries the exhaustion in the set of his shoulders like a permanent weight. He drops his briefcase by the door, its dull thud the only acknowledgment of another day endured. He knows you're there. The knowledge changes nothing. The kitchen is dark, the counters wiped cle…