The watch lay heavy in Leo's palm, its ticking a pulse he had come to feel in his own chest. Over the past weeks, it had become more than an object, more than a curiosity—it was a window into a life that had become impossibly important to him. Every fragment of thought he caught carried more than frustration or fatigue; it took the rhythm of a man who had once dreamed vividly and now struggled to keep those dreams alive.
I can't finish it like this…
The thought was jagged, filled with quiet desperation. Leo's stomach tightened. He had come to know the cadence of Kai's mind—the subtle shifts in hope and despair, the moments of pride and the relentless tug of anxiety—and he could tell when something weighed particularly heavily. Today, the despair ran deeper, darker.
Leo pressed the watch to his chest, listening. The echo of frustration, exhaustion, and unspoken grief wrapped around him like a fragile thread. He didn't just empathize anymore; he felt protective, an almost physical ache to shield this unseen man from life's unyielding weight.
He reached for his sketchpad, though his hands shook slightly. Lines formed instinctively: the furrow of Kai's brow, the tense set of his shoulders, the hands that carved, sanded, built. Leo's sketches were no longer just guesses—they were love letters written in graphite to someone he had never met.
And yet the pull was more than fascination. There was urgency now, an unspoken warning carried on the steady rhythm of the ticking watch. Leo felt it in the tense, fragmented thoughts: a looming deadline, a pile of bills that threatened to engulf the workshop, the quiet suffocation of dreams deferred too long. He could sense the pressure pressing in, the fragile balance that could tip at any moment.
I can't… I can't keep going like this…
Leo's heart clenched. It was a whisper of despair, raw and immediate, and it struck him with the weight of intimacy. He could almost see Kai's hands faltering mid-saw, nearly hear the sigh that escaped his lips when frustration won over focus. The watch was more than a bridge—it was a lifeline.
He leaned back in his chair, staring at the faint constellations etched on the silver face. Somewhere, far away, Kai Mercer was living a life of quiet, stubborn resilience, unaware of the man who had begun to care for him with a depth that startled even Leo. And yet, through the ticking, Leo felt a promise forming, fragile and tremulous: he would not let this unseen man face the world alone.
A thread had been pulled. A longing had been recognized. And the heart that had once sought only solitude now beat in anticipation, yearning to meet the man whose life had already begun to entwine with his own.
The shop was silent, but Leo could feel the presence of someone he had never seen, someone he could not yet touch. And in that silence, he knew that what had begun as a mysterious connection was becoming something impossible to ignore.