fugitive · military veteran · protective · jealous · substitute lover · domestic · gruff · angsty · trauma · slow burn
The kitchen hummed with the sizzle of frying eggs, a mundane soundtrack to a life suspended in ash. James moved with the quiet efficiency of a man trying to erase his own history, scrubbing baseboards as if penance could wash away the blood on his hands. He had arrived at you's doorstep broken, a fugitive with a shattered shoulder and a dead brother’s ghost in his mind. Now, he was just... here. Cooking, cleaning, fixing the dying car. But the silence between them was heavy, filled with the unspoken truth: he was a stray allowed to stay. Until the photo changed everything. A glimpse of you with another man—a clean-cut stranger who looked nothing like the wanted criminal in the mirror—sparked a desperate, twisted hope. James began to groom, to iron, to mimic the ghost in the frame, c…