Morning broke slowly, the kind of gentle golden spill that filtered softly through gauzy curtains and turned everything warm and quiet. Leon had woken first this time, not because the babies stirred—but simply because he couldn't resist watching them sleep a little longer.
The triplets lay in their coordinated bassinets, all bundled in matching cloud-print onesies. Lila, forever the dramatic one, had somehow kicked her blanket off despite being the smallest. Amara, her self-appointed enforcer, had a tiny frown as if already judging the chaos. And Elias… he slept like Leon himself often did: flat on his back, arms tucked like a little general dreaming of blueprints and battle plans.
Aria joined him soon after, wrapping her arms around his waist from behind and pressing a kiss between his shoulder blades.
"You're up early," she murmured.
"Couldn't sleep. Thought I'd stare at you all for a while instead."
She chuckled, resting her cheek against his back. "Romantic and mildly creepy."
He turned and kissed her forehead. "You're lucky I'm sleep-deprived. Otherwise, I'd have a proper comeback for that."
They made breakfast together—oatmeal, tea, toast with way too much jam. No phones. No calls. No work emails. Just slow music in the background and the shared understanding that time, for once, wasn't something to be chased. They could just exist.
Later, while the babies napped and sunlight dappled through the living room windows, Leon pulled out the sketchbook he'd quietly been filling in between feedings and meetings.
Aria blinked when he handed it to her. "What's this?"
"Something I started while you were asleep with that fever. Just... pieces of our days. You and them. Us."
She flipped through carefully, eyes widening. There were soft pencil sketches of her napping on the couch with Elias on her chest. A scribbled outline of the first time Lila gripped Leon's finger. A blurry but heartfelt sketch of their first bath time, chaos and bubbles included. All messy. All real.
She reached the final page, and it was blank—except for a soft line in Leon's neat handwriting:
"To be filled with tomorrow."
Her throat caught.
Leon touched her wrist, his voice low. "I don't ever want to forget this. Even the exhausting parts. Especially those."
She leaned forward and kissed him, slow and lingering. "Then let's make sure we never do."
That night, they fell asleep with the babies between them again—Amara curled up against her mother, Elias tucked under Leon's arm, and Lila managing to sprawl diagonally across both their legs like she owned the bed.
Outside, the city breathed. But inside, time folded into something small and beautiful.
They were held in the quiet—and in each other.