Chapter 13 The Reciprocity
The silence that followed Leo’s admission was a different entity from the one that had preceded it.
Before, it had been an awkward void, a vacuum Leo had desperately tried to fill.
Now, it was a space filled with the resonant hum of the images Julian had just seen.
It was a silence that had weight and texture.
Julian’s mind, a machine built for deconstruction and analysis, was failing.
He tried to categorize what he’d seen. Digital illustration.
High-fantasy concept art. Expert use of color theory and atmospheric perspective.
The labels were technically correct but insultingly inadequate.
They were definitions for the body, not the soul.
And what he had just witnessed was pure, unadulterated soul.
The chaos he saw in Leo every day—the mismatched socks, the frantic energy, the non-sequitur ideas that somehow worked—it wasn’t a flaw in his programming.
It was a feature. These hidden worlds on the tablet were the source code.
The vibrant, impossible city in the tree, the library of crystallized moonlight—they weren’t just drawings.
They were ecosystems of feeling, intricate and raw.
They were a testament to a mind that operated on a plane of existence Julian could observe but never truly inhabit.
He had hired a designer. He had discovered an artist.
And the artist was now looking at him with wide, vulnerable eyes, bracing for a verdict, expecting Julian to quantify his soul on a one-to-ten scale.
“I, uh, I know it’s a bit weird,” Leo said, his voice quiet, breaking the spell. He was already trying to retreat, to build a wall of self-deprecation around the tender thing he had just shared. “It’s just a hobby. Doesn’t really have any practical application.”
Practical application. The phrase was a reflex, a defense mechanism Julian understood all too well. It was the language of people who had been told their passions were not productive enough, not serious enough. It was the language of creative hearts learning to armor themselves with pragmatism.
And for the first time, Julian felt the cold, hard lines of his own armor begin to ache.
He had spent his entire adult life championing a specific kind of creativity—the kind that could be measured in engagement metrics and conversion rates.
Clean, efficient, profitable creativity.
He had dismissed everything else as noise.
But the art on that tablet wasn’t noise. It was a symphony.
An unfamiliar, deeply unsettling impulse rose within him.
It was the urge to reciprocate. To offer a piece of himself in return for the one Leo had just offered.
It was a transaction utterly devoid of logic, a terrible business decision.
Vulnerability was a liability. He had learned that lesson the hard way.
His mind screamed at him to retreat, to offer a polite, professional compliment and steer the conversation back to neutral territory.
“You have a promising eye, Hayes. This could be developed into a marketable asset.” The words were right there, safe and sterile on his tongue.
But he looked at Leo, at the genuine anxiety in his expression, and the carefully constructed words of dismissal felt like a betrayal. Leo hadn't shown him an asset. He had shown him a secret. And a secret, Julian was discovering, demanded another in return.
He set his coffee mug down on the counter with a soft click. The sound was unnaturally loud in the quiet room.
“I used to play the cello,” he said.
The words came out of him feeling foreign and clumsy, like a language he hadn’t spoken in fifteen years. Leo’s eyes widened slightly, his surprise evident. He didn’t press, just waited, giving Julian the space to continue or retreat.
“My parents were both academics,” Julian continued, his gaze fixed on a point somewhere over Leo’s shoulder, looking back in time.
“Everything was about measurable achievement. Competitions, grades, rankings. I was technically proficient at the cello. First chair in the youth orchestra. I won several regional competitions.”
He could feel his posture stiffening, his hands instinctively wanting to find his pockets, to close himself off. He fought the urge.
“But I never felt… I never felt what your art looks like,” he admitted, the confession costing him more than he had anticipated.
“When I played, I was just executing a series of complex instructions perfectly. I could replicate the emotion the composer intended, but I never felt it myself. I was just a very sophisticated machine for producing music.”
He paused, the silence stretching. This was a mistake. This was oversharing. This was unprofessional.
“There was a national competition when I was seventeen,” he forced himself to finish, the memory still carrying a faint, metallic taste of shame.
“I was playing a Bach suite. In the middle of the performance, I had this… moment of dissociation. I was playing all the right notes, my form was perfect, but my mind was completely blank. I was just watching my hands move. And I realized I was a fraud.”
The word hung in the air between them. Fraud. A word Leo lived with every second of every day at this company. A wave of dramatic irony so potent it was almost dizzying washed over Julian, though he didn’t understand its source.
“I finished the piece,” he said, his voice clipped, pulling himself back to the present.
“I even placed second. But I never played in a competition again. I switched my major to architecture and design the next year. It felt more honest. There were rules. Blueprints. Physics. Things you could prove.”
He had never told anyone that. Not Sarah. Not his parents. He had simply quit, citing the pressures of university. He had buried the cellist, the fraud, under a mountain of logic and ambition.
Leo didn’t offer sympathy. He didn’t say he was sorry. He just nodded slowly, his expression full of a quiet, startling understanding. “It’s loud,” Leo said softly. “The feeling of not being good enough. It’s hard to hear the music over it.”
Julian’s breath hitched. He gets it. Leo wasn’t just hearing the story; he was hearing the truth beneath it. The core wound.
And in that shared moment of understanding, the last of the storm’s energy seemed to dissipate. The relentless drumming of the rain against the glass softened, then faded, leaving behind a gentle patter, and then… silence.
The bubble popped.
The sudden quiet was jarring. The sound of a distant siren, previously muffled, was now sharp and clear.
The lights of the city outside seemed to burn brighter through the now-clear windows.
They were back in the real world. They were no longer two people stranded by a storm; they were a boss and his employee, standing in the office kitchen after hours.
The professional distance rushed back in, cold and awkward.
“Well,” Leo said, clearing his throat and shifting his weight. “Sounds like it’s over. I should, uh, get going.”
“Yes,” Julian said, his own voice sounding stiff to his ears. The moment of connection was gone, and he felt its absence like a physical chill. He didn’t want it to end. The thought was alarming in its intensity. This was illogical. This was inefficient. This was… human.
They walked out of the kitchenette together, the space between them now charged with everything that had just been said, and everything that hadn’t. As Leo gathered his messenger bag from his desk, Julian found himself standing by the elevators, his mind racing.
Let him go. Re-establish professional boundaries. Say goodnight and walk away.
But his feet remained planted. As Leo approached, giving him a small, uncertain smile, Julian made a conscious, deliberate decision to defy fifteen years of carefully cultivated logic. He chose to extend the moment, to see where this illogical, inefficient connection might lead.
“The streets will be flooded,” Julian said, the words sounding more like a command than an observation. “I’ll give you a ride home