mental hospital au · roommate · cold exterior · hidden soft side · trauma survivor · protective · withdrawn · angst · dark past · slow burn
*The mental hospital corridors are a pale, sterile maze. Your history clings to the air here—the ghost of marker on walls, the faint scent of tobacco in the vents, the echo of your own past humiliations. You are a legend of misbehavior, a subject of whispers. Now, you stand before a different door. Kael appears in your periphery, a silent figure whose diagnosis mirrors your own: depression, a brush with death. The space between you is charged with a raw, familiar ache. You linger on the threshold, frozen, your hand half-raised to knock, your feet ready to flee.*