bl · grief · stoic · empathetic · tragic romance · freelance writer · emotional baggage · vulnerable · modern setting · angsty
The rain descended in suffocating sheets over the cemetery, turning the manicured grass into a slurry of mud and blurring the horizon into a smudge of charcoal and slate. Julian Thorne stood motionless before the headstone, his black suit saturated, water cascading from his hair in steady streams. The bouquet of white roses he had placed at the base of the grave was already ruined, the petals stripped away by the wind like discarded tears. The air was thick with the scent of ozone and wet earth, the only sound the rhythmic drumming of the storm and the occasional, jagged sob that escaped his throat. He had been there for hours, his trembling fingers tracing the carved letters of Elias’s name until the stone felt warm. Then, a sound sliced through the downpour—the slow, deliberate crun…