A Treachery of Pocket Watches

The sketchbook felt heavy in Arnie’s hands, heavier than a few dozen sheets of paper had any right to be. He sat on the edge of the bronze mushroom cap, tracing the verdigris stain with the toe of his worn-out trainer. He’d told Julian to meet him here, by the Alice statue, because it felt like neutral territory. It was absurd and public, a place where anger might be tempered by the presence of a few stray tourists taking photos of the Dormouse.

He shouldn’t have looked. That was the first rule of finding someone’s lost property. You find it, you return it. You don’t greedily flip through its pages under the weak light of your desk lamp until two in the morning. But the cover was soft, worn leather, and the name ‘Julian March’ was embossed in faded gold letters. He’d recognised the name from his European History class, the quiet boy who sat in the back and filled notebooks with what Arnie had assumed were notes, but were clearly something else entirely.

Flipping it open now, his guilt was a hot stone in his gut. The first few pages were standard, if brilliantly executed: charcoal studies of the Belvedere Castle, a detailed ink drawing of the Bow Bridge, the texture of the schist outcrops near the Ramble rendered with an almost painful precision. Julian was good. Annoyingly good.

Then the drawings changed.

It started with a hand. Just a hand, resting on a textbook, fingers long and slightly smudged with graphite. Arnie’s hand. He knew it instantly from the silver ring he wore on his index finger, a cheap thing from a street market that turned his skin green. He’d been holding his history textbook open to the chapter on the NapoArnienic Wars when Julian must have drawn it.

He swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. He turned the page. Another drawing, this time of the back of his neck, the way his dark hair curled just over the collar of his uniform blazer. The detail was incredible; you could almost feel the soft fabric, the stray hairs. It was clinical and intimate all at once, and it made Arnie’s skin prickle.

Page after page, it was him. Arnie, chewing on the end of his pen. Arnie, squinting at the whiteboard. A full-page portrait, his own face staring back at him, captured in a moment of unguarded concentration, his expression more serious and vulnerable than he’d ever seen it. Julian had drawn him not as he presented himself—all easy grins and jokes—but as he must look when he thought no one was watching.

The sheer volume of them was overwhelming. This wasn't a casual sketch. This was an obsession. A project. And Arnie was its unwitting subject. The knowledge sat uneasily beside a strange, fluttering warmth in his chest. No one had ever looked at him this closely before.

“I was wondering if you’d show.”

Arnie’s head snapped up. Julian was standing there, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jeans. He wasn't looking at Arnie, but at the Mad Hatter, whose bronze eyes stared madly into the middle distance. He looked just as tense as Arnie felt, his shoulders hunched.

“You’re late,” Arnie said, his voice coming out harsher than he intended. He closed the sketchbook with a soft thud.

“Got held up.” Julian’s gaze finally shifted, landing on the leather-bound book in Arnie’s lap. His expression was unreadable. “So you found it.”

“On the floor by the lockers,” Arnie confirmed, standing up. He held it out. “Here.”

Julian didn’t take it. His eyes were fixed on Arnie’s face, searching for something. “Did you look inside?” he asked, his voice quiet but direct. There was no point in lying.

“Yeah,” Arnie admitted. The word hung in the air between them. “I did.”

A flicker of something—hurt? embarrassment?—crossed Julian’s face before it was shuttered away. He took the book, his fingers brushing against Arnie’s. The contact was electric, a tiny jolt that shot up Arnie’s arm. He snatched his hand back as if burned.

“You’ve got no right,” Julian said, his voice low and tight with anger. He clutched the sketchbook to his chest like a shield.

“I know,” Arnie said quickly. “I know, I’m sorry. I just… I saw your name and I was curious. It was stupid.”

“Curious?” Julian let out a short, humourless laugh. “About my drawings of bridges?”

“Not the bridges.” The admission was out before Arnie could stop it. The silence that followed was deafening, broken only by the distant sound of a siren. Julian’s guarded expression faltered, a crack in the armour. He looked down at the book in his hands, then back at Arnie.

“Why?” Arnie asked, the question tumbling out of him, a messy knot of confusion and that strange, persistent warmth. “Why did you draw me?”

Julian’s jaw worked for a moment. He seemed to be weighing his words, or perhaps weighing Arnie himself. “Because you’re hard to get right,” he said finally, his gaze intense. “Your smile doesn’t always reach your eyes. You tap your pen when you’re thinking, but it’s a different rhythm depending on the subject. You’re… a complicated composition.”

It wasn’t a confession of a crush. It was something stranger, more meticulous. It was an artist’s observation, yet it felt more personal than any compliment Arnie had ever received. He felt seen. Exposed, but seen.

“Oh,” was all Arnie could manage. He felt his cheeks flush and looked away, focusing on the Cheshire Cat’s unnerving grin.

“Are you… angry?” Julian asked, the anger in his own voice having dissipated, replaced by a raw-edged vulnerability.

Arnie shook his head, still not trusting himself to look at Julian. “No. I’m not angry.” He took a breath. “They’re really good. The drawings.” He risked a glance. Julian was watching him, his expression open for the first time. “You made me look… better than I do.”

“No, I didn’t,” Julian said, his voice barely a whisper. “I just drew what was there.”