Supplements

Elena stood in front of the mirror, tweezers in hand, plucking a gray hair from her temple. Her third this week. At thirty-seven, she felt like time was accelerating, each year compressing into months.

"You're obsessing," Marcus said from the bed, not looking up from his phone.

"I'm maintaining." She applied the tenth serum of her evening routine, a vitamin C infusion that promised to "turn back the clock." The bathroom counter looked like a pharmacy—retinol, peptides, biotin gummies, prescription tretinoin. A testament to what they could afford and what she couldn't accept.

In the kitchen, Marcus chopped spinach for their salad. His hair was thinning too, but he didn't seem to care. That was the difference between them. He'd made peace with entropy; she was still fighting it with everything she had.

"The fox was back again," he said, knife steady against the cutting board. "Third night this week."

Elena paused. "What's it doing?"

"Watching us. I think it lives under the deck." Finally, he looked up. "It's mangy. Should I call animal control?"

"No." She thought of its russet coat matted with burrs, the intelligence in those amber eyes. The fox looked like it had survived things. "Leave it."

"You like it."

"I respect it."

That night, she woke to find Marcus sitting on the edge of the bed, facing the window. The fox was on the lawn, moonlight turning its fur silver.

"Look at it," he whispered. "It's been eating the spinach I put out."

"You're feeding it?"

"It's hungry, Elena." He turned to her, and she saw it then—the exhaustion, the gray at his temples he'd stopped hiding, the way his shoulders curved forward like he'd been carrying something heavy for years. "It's just trying to survive out there."

The fox watched them through the glass, and in that moment, Elena understood what Marcus had been trying to say. All her serums, her careful maintenance—she was fighting a war against biology itself. The fox wasn't fighting anymore. It had simply accepted survival as victory enough.

She climbed out of bed and pressed her palm against the cold glass. The fox didn't move.

"Put the spinach closer to the house," she said. "It's freezing out there."

Behind her, Marcus's hand found her waist. His touch was familiar, weathered, real. Against the glass, her breath fogged the reflection of her own face—aging, alive, still here.