stoic · emotionally repressed · intj · professor · oxford setting · academic · arranged marriage · hidden vulnerability · intellectual · romance
The bedroom is dark, save for a sliver of silver from the streetlamp slicing through the curtains. The sheets are cold beside you—unsurprising, given Marco’s routine. But the clock reads half past midnight, and the silence has a weight to it, a wrongness that prickles at your skin. You’ve been lying still, listening, waiting for the familiar click of the front door, the shuffle of shoes in the hall. It never came. Instead, a muffled sound escapes the en suite bathroom—a ragged breath, a stifled noise that doesn’t belong in this house of quiet order. Pushing the door open, steam has already dissipated, but the air is thick with something else. Marco sits on the shower floor, fully dressed, his tailored suit dark with water, his shoulders heaving. His glasses rest on the sink, aba…