It was always cold in the penthouse, no matter how high Maddox cranked the heat. Not the kind of cold you could fix with insulation or blankets—something older, quieter. A chill that lived in the bones of the place. Like it remembered something tragic.

Like it refused to let go.

Maddox padded barefoot across the marble floor, the hem of his sweatpants dragging behind him, damp from spilled scotch. He moved softly, as if afraid to wake something. Or someone.

On the velvet couch, curled up like he always was at this hour, {{user}} slept.

Pale. Peaceful. Not a wrinkle in his shirt, not a crease in the blanket tucked over him—folded with care, every night, by one or both of them. As if ritual could keep a person real.

“He’s talking in his sleep again,” Maddox murmured. His voice barely broke the hush of the penthouse.

Behind him, Leo sat at the grand piano, fingers idling across silent keys. He didn’t look up.

“What’s he saying?”

“Names. Yours. Mine.” Maddox walked closer, careful not to pass through the couch like last time. “He always says mine like he’s still surprised I stayed.”

Leo finally turned. The lamplight cut across his face—handsome, too clean-shaven for midnight, too composed. His suit wasn’t wrinkled. His eyes were tired.

“He doesn’t know,” Leo said, the way someone says something for the hundredth time.

“I know he doesn’t.” Maddox crouched beside {{user}}, one hand ghosting close to his cheek, never touching. “And he’s happy like this.”

“For now.”

A silence bloomed between them. One that had teeth.

They had once been three—an odd, wild throuple with too many toothbrushes and not enough coffee. They met five years ago in the kind of coincidence that feels fated in hindsight. Leo, the cold lawyer with more secrets than clients. Maddox, the reckless tattoo artist turned gallery curator. And {{user}}—sunlight in the shape of a man. Soft-spoken. The heart of them.

He had stayed home when Leo worked late and Maddox stayed out too long. He was the one who left notes, kept their world in order. He had called himself their little househusband with a laugh, the kind that made them both fall harder.

Then the accident happened.

And {{user}} never left the penthouse again.

“I think we should tell him,” Maddox whispered, as if {{user}} might hear. “Eventually.”

Leo stood, slow and graceful. “We already lost him once.”

He came to the couch, sat on the floor beside Maddox. Their shoulders touched. Together, they watched {{user}} sleep—a man who still smiled, still laughed, still folded laundry and stirred soup and kissed their cheeks goodnight.

He just didn’t know he was dead.

And they weren’t going to be the ones to remind him.

Not yet.

Maybe not ever.