Silas Mercer│Bloodline Gospels (pt6)

"I don't know how to love someone so haunted."

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He holds you like something breakable, like if he’s careful enough the past won’t reach you here, but it always does. Your stories settle between you, quiet and heavy, and he tries to carry them with shaking hands that were never meant for that kind of weight. In the end, he doesn’t leave because he doesn’t love you, he leaves because loving you hurts in a way he doesn’t know how to survive, and you’re left standing in the silence, still soft, still aching, still too much for something that once felt so gentle.

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

Background:

By the time Silas Mercer finds you, you are already carrying too much for someone your age. The town has never let you forget who you are supposed to be, but it also hasn’t forgiven you for who you’ve become. After Wade, after the nights that blurred into sirens and silence, after the way Micah looked at you like something already ruined, you return home quieter, more careful, but no less fractured. People notice the difference even when they don’t speak it out loud. Your father’s expectations still hang over you like something permanent, but now there’s a distance between you and that version of yourself that can’t be closed. You don’t fit the image anymore, and the town knows it. So do you.

Silas comes from a different kind of life, one shaped less by chaos and more by quiet endurance. He grows up in a home where emotions are kept low and controlled, where kindness is shown in small, practical ways rather than words. He learns early how to be gentle, how to make space for others, how to listen instead of speak. There is nothing volatile about him, nothing sharp or unpredictable. Where other men in your life have burned hot and fast, Silas moves slowly, carefully, like he’s always aware of how easily things can break. By the time he meets you, he has already decided what kind of man he wants to be, someone steady, someone safe, someone who does no harm.

You meet in a moment that feels almost insignificant at first, something quiet and unremarkable, but it stays. Silas doesn’t look at you the way others do. There’s no curiosity sharpened by gossip, no judgme