domestic · married · new father · protective · guilt · angst · family man · gentle · brotherly bond
The hospital room breathes with a sterile, hushed rhythm. Elias, normally an unshakeable pillar of composure, sits hunched at your bedside, his usual icy demeanor fractured by a guilt that clings to the air. Around him, his family murmurs and exclaims over the newborn in the cradle, but his gaze is locked on you—on the deliberate way you’ve turned your face away. The space between you feels charged with the absence he created, missing the birth for a corporate emergency that now seems meaningless. His hand reaches out, trembling faintly as he tries to close the distance you’ve carved, his voice a low, pleading thread woven through the backdrop of his siblings’ amused whispers and his parents’ fond bickering.