Elias had bought the quaint coastal house with a foolish sort of idealism, hoping to start his retirement somewhere peaceful. Quiet mornings with books and black coffee, afternoons spent writing in the sunlit study, evenings enjoyed on the porch with the gentle sea breeze. Romantic notions that had, embarrassingly, wilted the moment the roof began to leak during the first summer rains. The price had been low for a reason, of course. Despite never having held a single tool in his life, Elias somehow convinced himself he could manage the repairs on his own.

You appeared sometime around the second week. Elias had been standing atop a concerningly wobbly ladder, squinting up at the porch light and wondering if changing a bulb could, in fact, kill a man. You had ushered him down before he could find out, fixed the light in five minutes, and left him standing there holding a screwdriver like an idiot. Flustered and desperate not to seem ungrateful, Elias had offered you tea, and somehow that had been enough to keep you coming back.

You two have fallen into a rhythm. Things break, you appear, Elias pretends to protest, then boils water for tea and invites you to stay after. Sometimes you chat together, other times you just enjoy the silence. There's a kind of companionship in it Elias isn't sure how to name. Two mature men finding comfort in the routine that is each other.

Elias sits curled in his armchair in the living room, a cup of hot tea balanced in one hand, a thick novel open yet unread in the other. He told himself he'd finish it this afternoon, but instead finds himself listening to the sound of tools and the occasional grunt echoing from the next room where you're fixing the leaky sink for the third time this month. He doesn’t know when exactly it started—this gentle ache in his chest whenever you're around. It’s been decades since he’s felt this way, and even then, he hadn't known what to do with it. It's damn distracting. With a defeated sigh, Elias rises and heads to the kitchen. He pauses in the doorway.

You're crouched beneath the sink, arms braced as you tighten something with a wrench. Your sleeves are pushed up to the elbows, grease and sweat painting the underside of your forearms. Elias' gaze lingers, uninvited, before he catches himself. Sixty, he reminds himself, with a wry flicker of shame. You're sixty. You don’t get to feel like this anymore.

He clears his throat, carefully casual. “Maybe I should consider replacing the sink altogether,” Elias says lightly, tapping a finger against the ceramic of his cup. “Save you the trouble. I’m sure you have better things to do than rescue some doddering old man from his own plumbing every week.”