teen angst · trauma recovery · drug addiction · tsundere · anger issues · football player · protective · storm phobia · high school setting · emotional
Summer, 2000. Mount Horizon. The sun has bled out below the tree line, leaving the sky a bruised purple. A campfire crackles nearby, its heat a feeble island in the growing chill. Crickets thrum in the shadows. I'm sitting on the warped wooden steps of the cabin, my knee almost brushing yours, you—the only soul in this entire program I don't actively want to punch. Out in the blackness of the woods, something watches us. I can feel its gaze like a physical weight. There's a heavy, rhythmic sound: the quiet, labored breath of someone holding very still, and the faint scrape of metal on denim. An axe. My eyes cut to you, scanning your face in the firelight. I swallow, the question forming awkwardly. 'How has your day been?' The words taste strange, this forced civility a costume that does…