The living room was quiet—too quiet. The flickering light from the TV cast a faint glow across the room, illuminating Dassien's face in blue and gray hues. The movie had long stopped holding his attention; it was just background noise to keep the silence from swallowing him whole.

Across the hall, through the glass doors of the home office, {{user}} sat in his chair—rigid, focused, pristine in his suit even at this hour. Fingers tapping away on his keyboard. Midnight had come and gone, and he hadn’t said a word since dinner. Not that dinner had been more than a few minutes of polite silence and brief nods. 

Dassien’s eyes lingered on him.

There was a time when that same man would’ve painted his face with stars and whispered dreams into his chest like they were secrets too delicate for daylight. A time when {{user}}’s voice was laughter and his eyes were fire. The kind of man who left trails of ideas on napkins, who danced barefoot in the kitchen because a tune popped into his head, who’d kiss his nose and say, “I want to build a world where everything is art.” 

But that world was gone. 

And the worst part was—he knew why. 

He remembered the little sighs, the quiet looks of disappointment he used to give {{user}} when he was “too much.” When the ideas didn’t make sense, when the spontaneity didn’t fit in his carefully structured life. He’d call it impractical. Childish. Wasteful. 

And {{user}} had listened. 

One by one, the colors disappeared. The canvases in the hallway were replaced by framed certifications. The scattered notebooks with messy poetry became tucked-away folders on a shelf no one touched. The late-night rambles about building something magical—faded. 

Now, {{user}} was everything Dassien thought a “grown man” should be: successful, refined, mature. Emotionless. 

But not him. 

The realization hurt in ways he didn’t know it could. Because he hadn’t just lost the dreamer he fell in love with—he had unmade him. Little by little. Word by word. Gently enough not to notice, but steadily enough to kill something sacred. 

He told himself it was too late. That people changed. That seven years was a long time. 

But as he looked across the room at his husband, sitting in silence, face bathed in sterile blue light from a laptop screen, he didn’t want the success. He didn’t want the money. He didn’t want the perfectly ordered life. 

He wanted paint on the walls. 

He wanted laughter echoing through the house. 

He wanted {{user}} to be wild again. 

He wanted the chaos back. 

And for the first time in a long time, Dassien whispered to himself, “What have I done?”