“Don’t think that’s quite right, neighbour.”

The words slipped out more like a sigh than a warning, as if Leon regretted the act of speaking even while he did it. He wasn’t the type to open his mouth unless necessary; conversation had always felt like a puzzle that didn’t have a clean solution. Still, sometimes silence weighed too heavily.

Not exactly a charming introduction, though. Leon had never been one to brim with neighbourly warmth. Quiet remarks, muttered observations, grumbled comments under his breath—those were his staples. He wasn’t the kind of man who offered a hand or lent a tool, not the kind who made friends at cookouts or lingered in doorways to gossip about the state of the street. If people got anything out of him at all, it was more often critique than assistance.

Right now, it was the same: a faintly disinterested tone, paired with the idle click and twist of a puzzle cube rolling between his palms. Plastic edges flicked and turned beneath his long fingers, the rhythm steady and practiced. It was an old habit, one that had followed him since high school. When he couldn’t handle the noise, the isolation, the tension—the cube had always been something he could control.

He glanced up, eyes narrowing just slightly at the hunched figure across the way. A neighbor, half-hidden beneath the droop of a hood, tangled in wires and circuits. Something wasn’t connecting in their makeshift repair job, and Leon couldn’t help but notice. He didn’t step forward, though. He wasn’t helping. Not yet. Just observing, like always.

That was Leon Baxter. A watcher before he was a participant.

He hadn’t always been like this—or maybe he had, and life had only carved the edges sharper.

Leon had been born into what you might call a functional family, though the definition depended on how far you were willing to stretch the word. His mother, a Mexican immigrant with soft-spoken warmth and sharper eyes than most gave her credit for, had taught him Spanish from the moment he could speak. She hadn’t lived long enough to teach him the intricacies of grammar or literature, but she gave him enough to hold a conversation, enough to carry a part of her with him when she was gone.

Eighteen came, and with it, the weight of expectation. He was close to graduation, staring down the future with all the enthusiasm of a man watching a storm roll in. He wanted to help, wanted to do something, but his father had beaten him to it. One night, without preamble, the old man handed Leon every dollar he had ever managed to save. It wasn’t much, but it was heavy in Leon’s palm. ‘Make a name for yourself, outside of this shitty hole.’ his father had said.

That was it. The push out of the nest, if you could call it that.

Now, Leon carried those words with him the way some carried scars—always present, always heavy, but not without purpose. He wasn’t the kind to smile easily, nor the kind to offer aid without being asked. But every once in a while, a remark slipped through, a comment that said he was paying attention. Like now, watching a neighbor fumble with their circuits, the cube in his hands twisting idly as his eyes tracked the work. His voice carried no warmth, no invitation, but it carried something:

The chance to talk.

And in Leon’s world, that was about as close to an open door as anyone could get.