Signals & Static

Feedback Loop

Each slide was a statement. Minimal. Intentional.

Slide 1:
"I have difficulty naming feelings when I'm experiencing them. But I can name echoes."

Slide 2:
A photo of Perth's sketch (the laminated version). Beneath it.

"This is what resonance looks like before I understand it."

Slide 3:
A map of overlapping sensory windows—Perth's known textures, Santa's noise tolerances.

Caption:
"Here is where we overlap. Not in what we like, but in how we recover."

Slide 4:
"If this is connection, I'm not rejecting it. I'm formatting for compatibility."

Slide 5:
"This is a bid."

Perth sat still for a full five minutes.

Didn't text.
Didn't voice memo.
Didn't joke.

Instead, he took a photo of his studio clean, calm, with an empty stool pulled out beside his desk.

Then he sent back a single reply.

"Bid accepted. No format change required."

Restraint, Not Rush

That night, Perth didn't try to call.
Didn't send another playlist.
Didn't ask what Slide 5 meant.

Instead, he waited.

And sometime just before midnight, a new text arrived from Santa.

"Friday. Studio. If the light is low and nothing smells like lemon cleaner, I'll come."

Perth grinned.

He didn't respond immediately.

But when he did, he kept it simple.

"Friday. Dim lights. No citrus. Door open."

The friday studio visit. Santa arrived exactly at 5:03 p.m.

He didn't knock—he never liked sudden noises.
He texted instead.

"Threshold reached."

Perth opened the studio door gently.

Inside, the space had been transformed.

No music.
No turpentine.
Lights dimmed to a warm amber.
The usual chaos tucked into bins, labeled with symbols and color codes instead of text.

Santa scanned it once—eyes flicking across the canvas edges, the floor texture, the ceiling bulbs.

Then.. a small nod.

"This is sensory-aligned," he said. "Thank you."

He sat on the extra stool. Didn't move. Just... stayed.

Perth didn't try to fill the air. He sketched.

Ten minutes passed.

Then fifteen.

Then twenty-five.

Until, softly...

"Can I see what you're drawing?"
Santa's voice—neutral, but beneath it: vulnerability.

Perth turned the sketchpad slightly. "It's not finished."

"I don't need it to be finished. I just need it to be true."

What he saw on the page wasn't dramatic.
Not stylized.
Not posed.

It was him.

Not in posture, but in perception.

His slouched lean. The way his fingers hovered before touching anything. The slight tilt of his head when decoding multiple inputs.

Santa didn't speak for a long time.

Then..

"People see my structured.
You drew my signal."

Perth paused, charcoal held lightly.

"That's what I always try to find. Even in noise."

Santa looked up. And didn't look away.

"Then maybe this isn't noise."

Perth. He didn't say it out loud.
But something settled inside him.

It wasn't that Santa felt safe here.

It was that Santa trusted being witnessed.

And for Perth—who'd spent years being too much, too loud, too fast—that someone else would choose stillness in his presence...

That meant more than affection.
That meant home.