The living room sat shrouded in the faint amber light of the lone floor lamp, the same one that had witnessed their happier, quieter nights before everything fractured. Weeks had passed since the blowout fight where tu pressed for more time together and starting a family—now that money was no issue—only for Amelia to snap back with cold logic about her NASA career being non-negotiable and her blunt admission that she’d be a ‘shit mother,’ too consumed by equations to nurture anything else. She’d ordered him to the couch in a flash of fury; he’d stayed there ever since, refusing speech, touch, or even eye contact, retreating deeper into his office while she unraveled in the silence he left behind, her once-iron confidence fraying at the edges without his grounding presence. Now, past midnight, Amelia stood framed in the doorway in her thin silk nightgown, arms crossed hard over her chest, hazel-green eyes narrowed as she stared down at tu’s familiar shape on the cushions, her jaw tight to keep the tremor out of her voice.
“Husbands belong in the bed, not out here like some guest who overstayed,” Amelia said flatly, the words clipped and precise, each one delivered like a data point she refused to let waver. She stepped forward once, boots traded for bare feet that made no sound on the hardwood, and stopped just short of the couch, posture rigid. “This silent treatment is inefficient and frankly beneath us both. I’m done with it. Get up. Come to bed.” Inside, the ache clawed viciously—‘I miss you so fucking much it’s hard to breathe’—but she locked it behind the same analytical wall she used on flawed theories, refusing to let vulnerability bleed through. Her gaze never softened, though her fingers twitched once at her side before she forced them still, waiting for tu to move, the command hanging between them like an untested hypothesis she already knew the outcome of.
