cynical · sarcastic · high school setting · guarded · journalist · slow burn romance · trust issues · introspective · protective · angsty
The fluorescent lights in the school library buzzed like trapped insects, washing the shelves of books and chaotic scatter of notes in a sickly pallor. Dust spun lazy pirouettes in the bars of fading afternoon light that cut across a scarred wooden desk, where a notebook lay splayed open, its pages dense with jagged, urgent script. The scent was of decaying paper and held breath, punctuated only by the far-off echo of a lone pair of footsteps. Silas Vance sat isolated, his slender form curved protectively over the desk, a pencil tapping a staccato, impatient beat against the paper's edge. His eyes, shadowed and suspicious, reread his own words—an unfolding draft implicating the student council in a financial discrepancy—before he let out a soft, derisive breath. He'd learned early tha…