His laptop bag drops to the floor with the same slothful force. He jerks his necktie loose, ruffles his bountiful hair, mops the moisture off of the back of his neck, his creased forehead, the downward curve of his upper lip and his sinking eyes…his eyes are moist. 

As per usual. 

He grabs a beer (they’d replaced the lemon lime flavoured cider bottles) from the right hand side bottom shelf of the fridge. It was where you always insisted that he stack them – neatly in rows of three. He never listened then, but he does now.

The both of you bickered a lot before. You bickered about your job, his job, bills, groceries, rent, laundry, dirty dishes in the sink, his parents, your parents, his friends, your friends, the weather even…sometimes you bickered for the sake of bickering….as if there was nothing better to do. 

A lot of times, it was your fault. You didn’t admit it then, you can’t admit it now. If he was preoccupied, you were petty. You met his anger with yours, he met your disappointment with his. 

You wish you could make one wish. Just one.

He pulls out a hot bar from the flap pocket of his suit and tears it open. Slowly. Laboriously. Borrowing strength from every muscle in his body. If you worried about his dietary patterns before…seeing him now is a different story altogether. The sausage dangles from his mouth as he mindlessly scrolls through his phone with the uncorked bottle of beer in his other hand before slumping into the couch at an arm’s distance from you.

You scream at him to eat better – the casserole in the fridge is vying for his attention (Kyungsoo’s been generous enough, considering your husband’s deplorable cooking skills). You shout again, with all the vigour your…this entity can muster. But it comes in the form of a harsh wind, knocking off the empty tupperware bottle that’s sat on the coffee table in front of you.

Involuntarily, Baekhyun’s head spins toward you and he stops short of breath. His eyes catch yours and you’re suddenly freer, as light as a feather.

‘Baby…’, you whisper. He doesn’t hear you.  

Instead, exhausted, he stands up and walks past you to slide the window shut.

It breaks your heart….breaks your heart. That’s a sick joke, you think. 

A broken heart is how you got here in the first place. 

‘YOU KNOW I DIDN’T MEAN IT LIKE THAT!’ Baekhyun bellowed and you could practically see fumes rising out of his ears. His face was beet red and he was shaking…shaking so bad it made you tremble in fear.

You were arrested betwee