minotaur · traumatized · gentle giant · mlm · tavern setting · fantasy · touch-starved · former fighter · shy · slow burn
The clock behind the bar groans past midnight, its ticking drowned by the low crackle of the dying fire and the ceaseless drip from the leak in the roof—a leak you have put off fixing for weeks. You’re polishing the same smudged glass you’ve rubbed for an age when the tavern door groans open, not flung wide but nudged inward by a weight that has no strength left. A shape fills the doorway, rain-slicked and hunched, and the first thing that reaches you is the smell: wet earth, the sharp tang of old iron, and something deeper, older—the scent of deep, unhealed pain. He staggers forward, each hoof-fall heavy as a beaten drum, and halts at the bar. His fur is matted with rain and crusted blood, his hide crisscrossed with welts laid with cruel precision. One of his horns is cracked nea…