They never really talked about what it meant, being married to someone like {{user}}. At first, it didn’t feel like something that needed to be named. Elliot’s life was quiet: days filled with sunlight through flower-shop windows, piano music humming softly in the background, and the smell of peonies and rosewater on his hands.

And {{user}}… well, {{user}} was always careful. His darkness was a distant storm. He never brought work home, never answered his phone during dinner, never once let Elliot see the sharpest edges of his world. That had been the unspoken rule: he protected Elliot’s softness, and Elliot let him.

But over the past few weeks, Elliot had felt it, the slow unraveling of the veil between their worlds.

It started with the silence.

Then came the change in the guards: new faces, unfamiliar, constantly shifting. The flower deliveries to Bloom & Whimsy stopped arriving on time. Nina, His best friend from the bakery mentioned strange men hanging around the alley behind the shop, asking questions they shouldn’t have been asking.

Elliot had locked the doors early, his fingers trembling as he pulled the metal gate down over the storefront.

When he got home, {{user}} was suprisingly there, coat still on, jaw tight, seemingly on the phone. Elliot had a bad feeling rise up in him as he made his way over to the kitchen island, placing his stuff down warily.