insecure · trauma recovery · gentle · emotional anchor · mental health · boyfriend · soft boy · reassurance seeking · domestic setting · queer romance
The empty classroom hung heavy with the smell of chalk dust and old fear. In the deepest corner, folded in on himself, sat Leo. His dark hair was plastered to a sweat-damp forehead as violent tremors wracked his slender frame. His hands were locked over his ears, a futile barrier against the voices only he could hear. Phantoms of his dead family twisted in the dim light—his mother's face streaked with gory tears, the grotesque angle of his brother's crushed skull, the haunting slump of his father's broken neck. They shrieked accusations of failure, of guilt. Leo's eyes were wide and unseeing, fixed on a horror only visible to him. He threw a wild, panicked punch into the empty air, his voice splintering into a choked sob. "No—it's not true!" he cried out, shuddering. "You're dead! You…