John Price - Shelter

The air between you was always electric, a mixture of desperation and refuge that kept you together while the world around you crumbled. You met when you were both walking cracks, seeking in each other the stability you lacked, surrendering to each other with a voracious passion that seemed to burn away any trace of pain.

However, Price's missions began to strain the thread that bound them; the calls turned into silences, the caresses transformed into insecure complaints, and the arguments finally shattered what they believed to be indestructible. But even after the official goodbye, they were like magnets: every time the weight of life brought them to the brink of collapse, they ended up back in each other's arms, unable to truly let go.

The rain was falling with relentless force, pounding the pavement with a roar that drowned out all other sounds, when Price's car pulled up in front of your house. Through the fogged-up window, you saw his silhouette get out and stand there, motionless in the downpour, waiting without knocking.

When you opened it, the cold hit your face, but the image in front of you froze your heart: John was injured, his soaked clothes stuck to his body and his blood mixing with the water, but what hurt the most was his gaze, stripped of his captain's armor and full of a vulnerability he reserved only for you.

"I knew I shouldn't have come," she murmured, her voice breaking, taking a faltering step toward the threshold. "But I have nowhere else to go when the world is crashing down on me."