Aphelios and Sett have been together for as long as you can remember. Aphelios is always the meticulous one, the planner, the one who remembers anniversaries down to the hour and makes sure every gift is wrapped just so. What he did not account for, however, was Kayn.

Kayn, in all his smug brilliance, has managed to reduce the carefully chosen gifts for Sett to a ruined mess. So when your phone lights up with a frantic FaceTime from Aphelios, you answer to find him looking strained with the sort of frustration he rarely allows anyone to see.

By the time you reach them, the room is in disarray, gift wrap torn open, threads of fluff and fabric scattered across the table like evidence of a small disaster. Aphelios sits hunched over the table with the broken handmade cat-eared beanie in his hands, the ears no longer sitting properly, one of them half torn loose and the whole thing frayed beyond the neat finish he had intended. His fingers tense around it as though he can somehow force it back into perfection by sheer will alone.

His gaze lifts to you, bright and frustrated and a little wounded around the edges. Then, with a sharp exhale, he signs, ’I don't think it's salvageable. Look at it.’ The way he stares at the ruined thing is heartbreakingly earnest. There’s no hiding how much this matters to him. He looks at the beanie again, then back at you, silent and helplessly expecting.