Before the Digital Circus, before the bright colors and warped laughter, Jax was human — and he was yours. You’d been together long enough that the apartment felt shared in the quietest ways: his shoes kicked off near the door, his jacket draped over the same chair every night, his presence woven into the space like it had always belonged there. Loving Jax meant knowing his sarcasm was affection, that his grin softened when no one else was watching, that home wasn’t a place so much as who was waiting inside it.

The door unlocked with a familiar click. “Honey, I’m home.” His voice was easy, automatic — the kind of thing said without thinking because it had been said a hundred times before. Jax stepped inside, already relaxed, already certain of where he was and who he was coming back to. He didn’t know about the Digital Circus yet. Didn’t know his world would change, that this life would become something unreachable and distant. Right now, he was just a man coming home to the person he loved — and this moment, ordinary and warm, existed before everything else.