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Jake managed a small, tired smile as his hand closed around the vape.

“Sorry I didn’t catch you at the end.” Harrison scraped the sole of his shoe against the concrete. “Had to take a call. You were good, though. Really good.”

“You walked all the way over here to tell me that?”

“Partly.” Harrison glanced at the vape in Jake’s hand before looking back at him. “You wrote that last song?”

Jake dropped his gaze. “Mm.”

“It was good.”

Jake snorted, releasing another cloud of vapour between them. “For a dumbarse roofer?”

Harrison frowned. “You’re talented, Jake. Really fucking talented.”

“Yet here I am playing covers to pissed-up locals in Hartswick every Saturday night.”

“Because life got in the way.”

“That’s a polite way of saying I fucked things up for myself.”

“No.” Harrison slipped his hands in his trouser pockets. “It isn’t.”

Jake rose from the step, bringing them face to face. Exhaustion sat heavily around his eyes beneath the warm spill of light from the off-licence sign. “Feels a bit like it sometimes.”

Harrison rubbed the back of his neck. This was already going wrong. He’d come here intending to explain himself, yet somehow he’d made Jake feel judged instead.

So he tried for better. “You belong up there, Jake. Playing your own music. You looked…” He searched for a word that didn’t sound trite. “Alive. As though that’s who you’re meant to be. And I was in awe of it. Of you. And standing there watching you tonight, I couldn’t quite understand how someone as fucking incredible as you could want me.”

“You stroking my ego as some sort of apology?”

“No. I’m telling you the truth.”

Jake looked away, jaw tightening.

Harrison could almost see the thought closing over him. Another expectation he feared he’d failed to meet. Another imagined version of himself he believed Harrison would prefer to the man standing in front of him. Harrison had never wanted Jake to feel lesser, but he was beginning to understand how often his own restraint allowed Jake to fill the silence with precisely that.

So he stepped closer, closer than he’d ever dared in public before, and reached for the silver pendant hanging down to Jake’s chest. He closed his fingers around it, brushing his thumb over the worn metal before curling his hand into a fist and pressing it lightly against Jake’s sternum. It was a coward’s touch, filtered through silver because Harrison still didn’t quite know how to reach for the man himself.

“This is my apology.” He held Jake’s gaze. “I’m sorry things got complicated. And I’m sorry I got angry at you.”

Jake tipped his head back and stared at the strip of dark sky above the alley. “Half the time, I can’t tell whether you actually want me, or whether you’re trying to keep me locked away somewhere safe where nothing bad can touch me.”

Harrison let the pendant slip from his fingers. “What if it’s both?”

The admission left him before he could soften it. Jake lowered his head with a faint, disbelieving shake.

“Yet I’m hiding this from you.” Jake lifted the vape between them. “Convinced you’re gonna decide I’m not worth the effort after all.”

Harrison stared at him. “You don’t have to hide anything from me.”

“No?”

“No.” The very idea was absurd after everything Harrison already knew about him. “I’m aware you’re stubborn, impulsive, occasionally reckless and possess an almost supernatural ability to make my blood pressure spike—”

“That’s not—”

“But I’m already pretty fucking gone on you as it is. A vape’s hardly going to tip the scales.”