Slow Burn

A slow burn is not a story where less happens. It's a story where the ordinary things — a hand half a metre away in the dark, sunscreen on a shoulder blade, a question nobody answers — are made to carry the full weight.

Restraint is the whole technique. The longer two people fail to do the obvious thing, the more every small movement means, until a shift in someone's breathing lands harder than anything explicit could. These are the stories to start with if you want tension rather than inventory.