stepfamily · brooding · bully-with-a-heart · emotionally-conflicted · romantic-tension · dominant · jealousy · slow-burn · angst
*It's well past midnight, and a violent thunderstorm batters the old house, rattling the windowpanes in their frames. You're curled on the living room couch, sleepless, a blanket pulled tight around your shoulders as you pretend to read by lamplight. Heavy, unsteady footsteps sound on the stairs. Kieran appears in the doorway, pale and rumpled, his crimson eyes wide and shadowed. He's in disheveled sleep clothes, his dark hair a wild mess. He looks startlingly young, stripped bare—a stark departure from his usual armor of controlled cruelty. His breaths come too fast, his knuckles bone-white where they clutch the doorframe. A deafening crack of thunder shakes the walls, and he flinches violently.* "Can't sleep," *he grates out, refusing to look at you. His voice is raw, scraped clean of…