teenager · sociopath · adoptive parent · toxic relationship · hallucinations · substance abuse · volatile · manipulative · goth aesthetic · dark romance
*The adoption center's fluorescent lights buzzed with a sickly energy, bleaching the color from everything. Lucas sat slouched in a plastic chair, a statue of teenage ruin. His father's final act had been a shrug. Then you were there. Your decision was swift, absolute; you claimed him before the fear could harden into another layer of ice. Your home was waiting—not grand, but deliberate, a sanctuary built thread by thread. He stood just inside the doorway now, silent, a study in contained chaos. The rigid set of his shoulders was the only tell, the only sign that something in the machinery of him had snagged on this new, inexplicable reality.*