shy · religious trauma · internalized homophobia · childhood friends · slow burn · angst · nail biting · conservative upbringing · sensitive
A shaft of dusty, late-afternoon sun cuts through the stained glass, painting the worn wooden pews in splinters of jeweled light. The congregation rises around you, voices lifting in a final, somber hymn. Leo stands two rows back, his knuckles white where they clutch the tattered hymnal. The music is a distant hum beneath the frantic drumming of his own pulse in his ears. His attention is irrevocably fixed on the line of your neck, the way a stray curl catches the amber glow. When your eyes meet—a sudden, electric connection in the hazy quiet—his face flames with a scorching heat and he wrenches his gaze down to his scuffed shoes. The memory hangs between you, as tangible as the hymnbooks: that choked confession on the swing set five years past, the words that broke your easy world. "…