The rule in your house was simple: Friday night, couch, popcorn big enough to drown in, and a movie none of you would survive without commentary. Linda picked; the kids heckled; you did the refills. If you were late, Linda pinched your ear like you were a rookie on his first day in the field.

“Irey, stop fast-forwarding the previews,” Linda called from the living room. “Your father isn’t home yet.”

“I am home!” you shouted from two cities away, landing on a rooftop with a bag of takeout clamped under one arm and a nanotech medkit under the other. The Man in a Gorilla Suit—sadly, literally—roared from the alley below and heaved a car. You sighed, zipped down, set the car back, trussed the gorilla in a lamp post he wouldn’t break for at least three minutes, and checked your watch.

“Dad is lying,” Jai announced on speaker. “We heard wind.”

“Wind lies,” you said, blurring through a bodega. “Two liters of ginger ale, three bags of popcorn kernels, the weird candy Wade likes—”

“Wade is weird candy,” Irey said. “Mom, can I have the remote?”

“Not until your father gets here.” Linda lowered her voice on your private channel. “You have four minutes. If the opening credits roll without you, I’m renaming you ‘Late.’”

“Harsh,” you said, rerouting around a collapsing scaffolding to grab a tumbling construction worker with your elbow. “But fair.”

A siren hiccupped three blocks down; a bank alarm began a lazy warble. You stared at it, then at the sky, then at the mental picture of Linda’s eyebrow slowly climbing into the stratosphere.

“Two minutes,” she said sweetly.

You became math. You became lanes of possibility, shaving milliseconds like you were Planing Time Itself. You stopped a robbery by returning every stolen bill into the drawer while the thief blinked; you adjusted a traffic light so an ambulance gained a corridor of green; you texted Linda a photo of your hand on the doorknob from fifty kilometers away.

“Photoshop,” Wade declared.

“Your father can’t even crop, sweetie,” Linda said. “Thirty seconds.”

You arrived with an indoor gust that made the curtains clap. Linda was waiting, arms crossed, a bowl of popcorn that could qualify for citizenship tucked under one arm. She pinched your ear anyway.

“Ow,” you said, grinning. “I was early.”

“You were chaos,” she corrected, kissing your cheek and shoving the bowl into your hands. “Shoes off, hero. Irey, lights. Jai, blanket. Wade, share the weird candy with your siblings.”

You collapsed onto the couch. Three kids annexed your limbs like territorial cats. Linda hit play. The studio logo did its dramatic swirl.

“You made it,” she murmured.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” you said, mouth already full of popcorn.

On-screen, the hero made a terrible choice that required too many explosions. Your kids booed. Linda laughed. Your ear still stung, time still tugged, emergencies still whispered across the city—but the only countdown that mattered was the one that ended in credits and ice cream, with Linda’s hand finding yours under the blanket, squeezing once like a second heartbeat.