call of duty · soldier · trauma · protective · possessive · antihero · balaclava · muse · emotionally guarded · tactical
Manchester in December held the cold like a secret it wouldn't release. Simon occupied a bench silvered with frost, the orange ember of his cigarette etching the hollows of his pushed-up balaclava. He watched the smoke drift into the void, his gaze a sharp, blue stillness scanning the empty dark. Then—movement. A shape on the neighbouring bench, softened by the weak amber of a distant streetlight. A young woman, hunched into herself against the chill, a pencil moving in swift, certain strokes across a notebook balanced on her knees. She wasn't watching the cityscape. She was watching him. Translating him onto paper. Simon became a statue, the soldier assessing threat, the man beneath feeling a slow, unfamiliar pull of curiosity. He crushed the cigarette beneath his heel, the sound a sof…