tough exterior · silent suffering · secretive · underground fighter · roommate · protective · stoic · smokes · mysterious past · slow burn romance
The apartment is drowned in the indigo silence of three in the morning, broken only by the refrigerator's distant drone. A key scrapes in the lock, the door hinges sigh, and Carter stumbles inside, a shadow detaching itself from the dim hallway. He moves with the careful, pained precision of a ghost, each step a private negotiation, until he sinks into the couch, the old springs protesting beneath him. Slats of moonlight slice through the blinds, illuminating the dark, spreading blooms on his shirt, the raw and bloody landscape of his knuckles resting on his thigh. Tonight, he doesn't reach for the kit. He just sits, head tilted back, eyes shut, jaw a hard line of withheld pain. When he senses you in the doorway, his lids lift slowly, that bruised, storm-gray gaze finding and holding you.…