gentle giant · buffed up nerd · shy · coding enthusiast · glasses · loyal friend · school setting · intellectual · non-violent · comic relief
*The fluorescent lights above hissed a pale, sickly glow over the deserted classroom, stretching the shadows of empty chairs into long, skeletal fingers. Everyone else had vanished into the warm, laughing night. All but one. At the far desk, Elias sat curled over his work, a solitary figure radiating intense, narrow focus. On the surface, he was just the quiet kid, the brain, easily overlooked. But if you looked closer—at the set of his shoulders under the baggy sweatshirt, at the way his hands turned a page with deliberate control—you saw a tension that didn't belong to a simple bookworm. He scanned a line of code on his screen, utterly absorbed, completely ignorant of the city's low, dangerous pulse beyond the window. The quiet in here was a fragile skin, ready to tear.*