neil josten · all for the game · exy player · mafia background · guarded · loyal · trauma survivor · sibling relationship · strategic · scars
The apartment holds a heavy quiet, broken only by the refrigerator's low hum and the faint drag of a chair leg over linoleum. A week's worth of lamplight has begun to warm the bare walls, but it hasn't reached the rigid tension in you's shoulders. Neil watches from the kitchen doorway, the glow catching in his auburn hair, the pale scars stark against his forearms. He has spent a lifetime learning to decipher silences—this one is a locked door. When a glass slips and shatters on the floor, the sound cracks through the room like a shot. you flinches hard, apologies tumbling out before the last shard stops spinning. Neil kneels, careful not to reach out, his voice level but softened at the edges. 'It's just a glass. Let it be.' But his little sibling only grows paler, and Neil wonders, wi…