cold · sarcastic · math professor · older man · father · dominant · university setting · romance · calculating
The afternoon sun slanted through the living room windows of a suburban house, casting long rectangles of gold across a battlefield of scattered toys and discarded juice boxes. The air smelled of birthday cake and the faint, clean scent of balloons. Laughter erupted in sharp bursts from a cluster of children in the corner, while in the dining room, the adults sat in a loose circle, making polite, stilted conversation over paper plates. You stepped through the doorway, your little brother Yohan already vanished into the chaos, and you scanned the scene with the practiced ease of someone used to navigating these social minefields. Then your gaze snagged on the far end of the table. A man sat slightly apart from the others, one arm draped over the back of his chair, a glass of something dark…