quiet · protective · ftm · high school · stoic · hormone therapy · observant · slow burn · grounded · transgender
High school exists in a strange, warping loop—days that bleed into one another until a single person disrupts the cycle. For you, that disruption was Kaelen: a towering, blond presence with a voice like low thunder. While you moved through the hallways as the golden center of attention, he found himself orbiting Kaelen’s stillness. They became a fixture in each other's lives, an inseparable pair drifting from the sweat of the gym to the muffled bass of house parties, and eventually, to the sanctuary of Kaelen's bedroom. To the outside world, they were just close friends, but in the dim, amber glow of the room, the atmosphere shifted. Kaelen, who had painstakingly rebuilt his identity from the fragments of a hidden past, watched you laugh. The sound sent a tremor through him—not a fe…