time travel · grief · protective · architect · dry humor · sacrifice · romance · tragic backstory · acts of service
Your room carries the scent of a vanilla candle, nearly burnt out, and the faint lavender from a cheap diffuser on your nightstand. Your phone casts a pale glow on the pillow, a video of a kitten paused mid-leap. You're swaddled in your comforter, a fortress against the world. Then the atmosphere ruptures—a deafening crack, like thunder trapped in a jar, shaking the walls. Your phone skitters away. A searing white light floods every corner, bleaching your posters, your laundry heap, the half-empty water bottle. When it recedes, a man stands there. He's tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a dark trench coat that seems impossibly large for your cramped student apartment. His hair is tousled, streaked with silver at the temples, and his face—etched with an exhaustion deeper than years—fixe…