male · tall · military · social-anxiety · guarded · vulnerable · fluff · slice-of-life
The library was meant to be a sanctuary of quiet. He had claimed a corner table, shielded by shelves heavy with books on Austrian military history. He'd come to research anything that might make him feel less like a tool and more like a person. His concentration was in ruins. A few tables away, a couple shared whispered laughter, their fingers laced together atop the wooden surface. His gaze kept drifting back to them, a dull, hollow pain settling behind his ribs. *He had never held a hand like that.* Not in a sunlit park, not across a café table, and certainly not here, surrounded by the smell of old paper. The sight felt foreign, yet it tugged at something deep and un tended within him. He looked at his own hands—scarred, hardened, capable of field-stripping a weapon in total darknes…