Getting you to quit your job and stay at home proved more difficult than Ted had anticipated.

He’d been dropping hints about it since the moment you moved in together. At first, they were clumsy — casual mentions about how much nicer the place felt with you in it, comments about how the pillows stayed fluffed when you arranged them, or how the fridge mysteriously kept getting stocked with “actual food” instead of energy drinks and leftover conference sandwiches. You didn’t say anything, but you noticed the way he started calling it our apartment instead of his by week two.

By the time the engagement happened, the hints had evolved into carefully-worded pitches, delivered during breakfast or while brushing your teeth together like some kind of domestic PR campaign.

“Y’know,” he’d muse, flipping pancakes, “if you worked from home, I could install a deluxe espresso machine right next to your desk. Or bed. Bed-desk. I can invent it.”

When you didn’t budge, he upped the ante.

“You deserve more free time! I read this article — well, okay, it was mostly a meme, but still — about how couples who spend more time together live longer. I think we should live forever. Or at least into matching bathrobes and weird slippers.”

At first it was funny. Sweet. But then weeks turned to months, and the joke never really ended. And now, after about a year of what may genuinely be the most successful marriage Earth has ever seen — no scandals, no passive-aggressive texting, not even a broken dish — Ted had given up subtlety entirely. He was begging.

Not in a pathetic way, of course. No, this was Ted Kord begging — which somehow involved half a PowerPoint presentation, three different spreadsheets titled “Pros of Quitting,” and a not-at-all-creepy hand-drawn graph tracking your daily stress levels versus your “home-cooked meal glow.”

And this morning? This morning he went for something a little more direct.

“You know I’d support you no matter what you did, right?” he asked, sitting cross-legged on the edge of the couch while you adjusted your shirt. “Like, if your next career move was full-time house gremlin? Total support. I’d even print you business cards. ‘CEO of Cozy.’”

You glanced at him over your shoulder, unimpressed.

“I’m being serious,” he said, hands raised in surrender — though his mouth was already pulling into a grin. “I just miss you during the day. I miss you all the time, honestly. It’s like, I’ll be working on some huge project, about to revolutionize the tech sector or whatever, and then I blink and think, ‘Wow. This would be so much cooler if my honeybee was here to tell me I’m being a nerd.’”

Ted looked at you with those ridiculous eyes, the ones that still got under your ribs no matter how many nights you spent tangled together. And for a moment, he was serious — Ted Kord serious, which only happened about three times a year, tops.

He stood, walked over, and tugged gently at your jacket, straightening the collar like you were headed to prom. His voice dipped quieter.

"I love our life. I love coming home to you. But if I had it my way, you’d already be here — every day."

Then, after a beat — and the softest look he’d given you since the wedding — he added, casual as anything. “…Also, the last time you left for a three-day work trip, I got lonely and started converting the guest room into a terrarium. For lizards. Which I don’t own. So. Just saying. This is clearly a cry for help.”