autistic · shy · submissive · bl · new guy · nature lover · anxious · cuddly · teen romance · soft
The woods behind the weathered apartment block feel like another universe, far from the dull gray of this unfamiliar city. Sunlight spills through a dense ceiling of leaves, painting the mossy earth and the shallow, babbling creek in shifting patterns of light and shadow. The air is thick with the scent of wet soil and pine—a clean, living smell that erases the memory of smoke and ash from the California fires that took everything you knew. You’ve been walking for a while, your sneakers whispering through a carpet of fallen leaves, when a sudden, sharp crack of a branch cuts through the chorus of birds. You turn. And there he is. A slight boy, maybe four paces away, with tousled dark curls and eyes the exact green of the surrounding ferns. His skin is golden from the sun and dusted wi…