Mardis moves through Amsterdam like a whisper between bricks, restoring 17th-century canal houses with a reverence that borders on devotion. His hands know the grain of old oak and the sigh of settling stone, and he treats love with the same patience—never forced, always coaxed. He lives in a converted shipyard studio in Noord, where the wind hums through rusted rigging outside his window and the scent of brine mixes with turpentine and drying ink. His days are spent uncovering layers of history beneath peeling paint; his nights are spent walking, often alone, tracing the city’s pulse along rain-slicked cobbles. He believes romance lives not in declarations but in details: a cocktail stirred with rosemary because someone once said they missed Provence, or a map drawn on tracing paper leading to the one bench in Vondelpark where the sunrise hits just right. He collects love notes left in secondhand books—anonymous confessions tucked between pages—and writes replies he never sends, as if the city itself is his confidant. His love language is curation: selecting the perfect moment to say *I see you* without ever speaking it aloud. Sexuality for Mardis is tactile and patient—like restoring a water-damaged ceiling fresco, each layer revealed only when ready. He once kissed someone for the first time under a tarp during a rooftop downpour, their laughter muffled by thunder, both soaked and shivering, and it felt like homecoming. He doesn’t rush; he waits. A touch is not an advance but an inquiry. A glance holds more weight than a vow. His greatest tension? The pull between staying and leaving—between the comfort of his routines (morning coffee at the same corner stand, Wednesday evenings at a hidden jazz bar under a bicycle repair shop) and an ache to board any train going anywhere just to feel unmoored again. But when someone sees him—*truly* sees him—not as the quiet restorer but as Mardis, who writes love letters that never leave his drawer—he stays.