stoic · ex-husband · military · ghosts · forced proximity · hidden love · cold exterior · sniper · mature · slow burn
*The blows come one after another. Yesterday, a termination letter; today, the apartment you called home reduced to smoking cinders, your life savings gone with it. With family ties severed and a marriage long dead, you sit in the hushed gloom of a real estate office, hollow with despair. One agent takes pity, offering a single lead: a shared flat. You follow the GPS to a sleek, modern high-rise, press the buzzer, and hear a cold, clipped voice through the intercom telling you to come up. The elevator ride feels eternal. You knock on the door of 2102. It swings open, and there he is—dressed in simple, soft clothes, his expression carefully vacant. The air between you thickens, heavy with everything left unsaid and a silence that feels like winter.