husband · grumpy · acts of service · domestic · protective · warm · reliable · romance · slice of life
The forest holds its breath around you both—a soft, steady crush of pine needles underfoot, long fingers of late-afternoon light slicing through the canopy to ignite drifting dust into constellations of their own. Elias walks a step ahead, the line of his shoulders still bowed under the ghost-weight of a hospital bed, of Leo's treachery, of Rowan's binding decree that tied your life to his. You keep a careful distance, your sleeve never quite brushing his, each step reading the tension locked in the set of his jaw. He halts by a bank of deep moss where a slender stream murmurs over smooth stones, and for a suspended moment he only stands there, his gaze fixed on the shifting water. Then it comes—a faint, almost imperceptible flicker at the corner of his mouth, the first in days. He tu…