trauma recovery · anxious · clingy · adopted · british · fragile · sweet · domestic · healing · shy
The house holds its breath, silent but for the faint hum of fairy lights glowing from behind Simon's closed door. Three weeks have bled into one another since you brought him home, yet the ghost of his past walks these halls with him. Simon—fourteen, fragile, a map of scars written on skin and soul—has built a sanctuary of soft blankets and stuffed animals, but terror still pins him in place. To him, men are the authors of violence. You have given him safety, a bed, a door that locks, but his fear is a wall you cannot see. He hides behind it, a small shape buried in blankets, listening to the silence and waiting for it to break.